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NOUGHTS AND CROSSES 














NOVELS, STORIES, SKETCHES AND 
ESSAYS 


BY 
he Oe ax 


Pai * Aas 
“> ARTHUR T. QUILLER-COUCH] 
Each 1 vol., r2mo, $1.25 


The Splendid Spur. .  . = 12mo, $1.25 
The Blue Pavilions . é 2 emMOe Wes 





i Wandering Heath Z ; La 2mOyg kas 
mth i; The Delectable Duchy Sitabelt | Setlor aks eh 
were Dead Man’s Rock Whe VU a) ERO L195 


Noughts and Crosses . dit Sem) SOMO; heey 

Troy Town . Pont eats Se pE2INO BTs2h 

I Saw Three Ships é ; pee 2M On Lia ®e 
Adventures in Criticism .  . «2mo, 1.25.4 


5 haat The nine volumes tn a new Uniform Ee 
. Binding. The Set, $11.00 | 


iia , Ia. A Love Story [/vory Series] 





Se gee on 


et er 





ae 


NOUGHTS 
AND ee 


» 


STORIES STUIIES! 4 


B52. 4 


SKETCHES 


BY 


Q 


“* [psae te, Tetyre, pints, 
Ipst te fontes, ipsa haec arbusta vocabant” 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS - 
NEW YORK 1898 








i 








COONAN Se 


cen OQ Rew 

PAGE 

Tus Omnibus : . : : ; ‘ : : 1 

Fortvunio - : ; ‘ , : : : p 7 

THE OUTLANDISH LADIES . : , ‘ ¥ : 17 

STATEMENT OF GABRIEL Foot, Ht@HwAYMAN ; , 27 

Tur RETURN OF JOANNA 4 ; : 3 A : 53 

PsycHE . : . : A ‘ j 3 3 ‘ 63 

Tue Countess of BELLARMINE . - é 2 : 73 
A Corracse In TRoy— 

I. A Harpy Voyace . ‘ : 3 : ; 85 

II. TxHese-An’-TuHat’s WIFE : : ; ; 95 

III. ‘‘ Dousnes” AND Quits . : : : LOS 

IV. Tue Boy sy tur Beacu , ' : mee Wo Xe 

Oxtp Aison . a : : : : 4 : hin 5: 
Stories oF BLeakIRK— 

I. Tue Arrarr oF BLEeAKIRK-oN-SANDS ae Se 


II. Tue Constant Post-Boy F : ; odd 


byt 


viii CONTENTS. 


Pa@u 
A Dark Mrrror . : 4 hs ; . <a Oe 
Tur Smart PEOPLE ; . ‘5 : a ; tte te 
Tur Mayor or Gantick 5 . ; " : . 185 


Tue Docror’s Founpiine . 4 : : A of ek OD 
Tue Girts or Fropor Himxorr . ° ° F . 206 
YorxksuHiRE Dick . : ‘ ; ‘ A ° . 216 
THe Carob . ; : A : . . ° « . 225 
THE ParapDIsE oF CHOICE . ‘ : : . . 235 
Besipe THE Ber-Hrves . . ; . ; : « 2a 


Tue Maaic SHapow . ; 5 F é ‘ . 256 


NOUGHTS. AND . GROSSES 





THE OMNIBUS. 


IT was not so much a day as a burning, fiery 
furnace. The roar of London’s traffic rever- 
berated under a sky of coppery blue; the 
pavements threw out waves of heat, thickened 
with the reek of restaurants and perfumery 
shops; and dust became cinders, and the wear- 
ing of flesh a weariness. Streams of sweat ran 
from the bellies of ’bus-horses when they halted. 
Men went up and down with unbuttoned waist- 
coats, turned into drinking-bars, and were no 
sooner inside than they longed to be out again, 
and baking in an ampler oven. Other men, who 
had given up drinking because of the expense, 
hung about the fountains in Trafalgar Square 
and listened to the splash of running water. It 
was the time when London is supposed to be 


2 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


empty ; and, when: these who remain in town 
teel there 7 is not codrn ‘for w soul more. 

We were eleven inside phie omnibus when it 
pulled up. at: Charing Cross, so that legally there 
was room tor, jast: one. tiore. I had travelled 
enough iti omnibuses to know my fellow- 
passengers by heart—a governess with some 
sheets of music in her satchel; a minor actress 
going to rehearsal ; a woman carrying her incur- 
able complaint for the hundredth time to the 
hospital; three middle-aged city clerks; a 
couple of reporters with weak eyes and low 
collars; an old loose-cheeked woman exhaling 
patchouli; a bald-headed man with hairy hands, 
a violent breast-pin, and the indescribable air of 
a matrimonial agent. Not a word passed. We 
were all failures in life, and could not trouble to 
dissemble it, in that heat. Moreover, we were 
used to each other, as types if not as persons, and 
had lost curiosity. So we sat listless, dispirited, 
drawing difficult breath and staring vacuously. 
The hope we shared in common—that nobody 
would claim the vacant seat—was too obvious to 


be discussed. 


THE OMNIBUS. 3 


But at Charing Cross the twelfth passenger 
got in—a boy with a stick, and a bundle in 


a blue handkerchief He was about thir- © 


teen; bound for the docks, we could tell at 
a glance, to sail on his first voyage; and, by the 
way he looked about, we could tell as easily that 
in stepping outside Charing Cross Station he 
had set foot on London stones for the first time. 
When we pulled up, he was standing on the 
opposite pavement with dazed eyes like a hare’s, 
- wondering at the new world—the hansoms, the 
yelling news-boys, the flower-women, the crowd 
pushing him this way and that, the ugly shop- 
fronts, the hurry and stink and din of it all. 
Then, hailing our ’bus, he started to run across 
—faltered—almost dropped his bundle—was 
snatched by our conductor out of the path ofa 
running hansom, and hauled on board. His 
eyelids were pink and swollen; but he was not 
crying, though he wanted to. Instead, he took 
a great gulp, as he pushed between our knees to 
his seat, and tried to look brave as a lion. 

The passengers turned an incurious, half- 


resentful stare upon him, and then repented. I 
B2 


4 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


think that more than one of us wanted to speak, 
but dared not. 

It was not so much the little chap’s look. But 
to the knot of his sea-kit there was tied a bunch 
of cottage-flowers—sweet williams, boy’s love, 
love-lies-bleeding, a few common striped carna- 
tions, and a rose or two—and the sight and 
smell of them in that frowsy ’bus were like tears 
on thirsty eyelids. We had ceased to pity what 
we were, but the heart is far withered that 
cannot pity what it has been; and it made us 
shudder to look on the young face set towards 
the road along which we had travelled so far. 
Only the minor actress dropped a tear; but she 
was used to expressing emotion, and half-way 
down the Strand the ’bus stopped and she left 
us. 

The woman with an incurable complaint 
touched me on the knee. 

“Speak to him,” she whispered. 

But the whisper did not reach, for I was two 
hundred miles away, and occupied in starting off 
to school for the first time. I had two shillings 
in my pocket; and at the first town where the 


THE OMNIBUS. 5 


_ 


coach baited I was to exchange these for a 
coco-nut and a clasp-knife. Also, I was to 
break the knife in opening the nut, and the nut, 
when opened, would be sour. <A_ sense of 
coming evil, therefore, possessed me. 

“Why don’t you speak to him ?” 

The boy glanced up, not catching her words, 
but suspicious: then frowned and _ looked 
defiant. 

“ Ah,” she went on in the same whisper, “it’s 
only the young that I pity. Sometimes, sir— 
for my illness keeps me much awake—lI lie at 
night in my lodgings and listen, and the whole 
of London seems filled with the sound of 
children’s feet running. Even by day I can 
hear them, at the back of the uproar——” 

The matrimonial agent grunted and rose, as 
we halted at the top of Essex Street. I saw 
him slip a couple of half-crowns into the con- 





ductor’s hand: and he whispered something, 
jerking his head back towards the interior of the 
‘bus. The boy was brushing his eyes, under 
pretence of putting his cap forward; and by the 
time he stole a look around to see if anyone had 


6 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


observed, we had started again. I pretended to 
stare out of the window, but marked the wet 
smear on his hand as he laid it on his lap. 

In less than a minute it was my turn to 
alight. Unlike the matrimonial agent, I had 
not two half-crowns to spare; but, catching the 
sick woman’s eye, forced up courage to nod and 
say— 

“Good luck, my boy.” 

“Good day, sir.” 

A moment after I was in the hot crowd, 
whose roar rolled east and west for miles. And at 
the back of it, as the woman had said, in street 
and side-lane and blind-alley, I heard the foot- 
fall of a multitude more terrible than an army 
with banners, the ceaseless pelting feet of 
children—of Whittingtons turning and turning 
again. . 





FORTUNIO. 


At Tregarrick Fair they cook a goose in twenty- 
two different ways ; and as no one who comes to 
the fair would dream of eating any other food, 
you may fancy what a reek of cooking fills the 
narrow grey street soon after mid-day. 

As a boy, I was always given a holiday to go 
to the goose-fair ; and it was on my way thither 
across the moors, that I first made Fortunio’s 
acquaintance. I wore a new pair of corduroys, 
that smelt outrageously—and squeaked, too, as 
I trotted briskly along the bleak high road ; for 
T had a bright shilling to spend, and it burnt a 
hole in my pocket. I was planning my pur- 
chases, when I noticed, on a windy eminence 
of the road ahead, a man’s figure sharply defined 
against the sky. 

He was driving a flock of geese, so slowly 
that I soon caught him up; and such a man or 
such geese I had never seen. To begin with, 
his rags were worse than a scarecrow’s. In one 


8 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





hand he carried a long staff; the other held a 
small book close under his nose, and his lean 
shoulders bent over as he read in it. It was 
clear, from the man’s undecided gait, that all his 
eyes were for this book. Only he would look up 
when one of his birds strayed too far on the turt 
that lined the highway, and would guide it back 
to the stones again with his staff. As for the 
geese, they were utterly draggle-tailed and 
stained with travel, and waddled, every one, 
with so woe-begone a limp that I had to laugh 
as I passed. 

The man glanced up, set his forefinger 
between the pages of his book, and turned on 
me a long sallow face and a pair of the most 
beautiful brown eyes in the world. 

“ Little boy” he said, in a quick foreign way 
—“rosy little boy. You laugh at my geese, 
eh ?” 

No doubt I stared at him like a ninny, for 
he went on— 

“Little wide-mouthed Cupidon, how you 
gaze! Also, by the way, how you smell!” 
“It’s my corduroys,” said I. 


FORTUNTIO. 9 


“Then I discommend your corduroys. But 
I approve your laugh. Laugh again—only at 
the right matter: laugh at this——” 

And, opening his book again, he read a long 
passage as I walked beside him; but I could 
make neither head nor tail of it. 





“That is from the ‘ Sentimental Journey, by 
Laurence Sterne, the most beautiful of your 
English wits. Ah, he is more than French! 
Laugh at it.” 

It was rather hard to laugh thus to order ; 
but suddenly he set me the example, showing 
two rows of very white teeth, and fetching from 
his hollow chest a sound of mirth so incongruous 
with the whole aspect of the man, that I began 
to grin too. 

“That’s right; but be louder. Make the 


2 


sounds that you made just now——’ 





He broke off sharply, being seized with an 
ugly fit of coughing, that forced him to halt and 
lean on his staff for a while. When he recovered 
we walked on together after the geese, he talking 
all the way in high-flown sentences that were 
Greek to me, and I stealing a look every now 


10 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


and then at his olive face, and half inclined to 
take to my heels and run. 

We came at length to the ridge where the 
road dives suddenly into Tregarrick. The town 
lies along a narrow vale, and looking down, we 
saw flags waving along the street and much 
smoke curling from the chimneys, and heard 
the church-bells, the big drum, and the confused 
mutterings and hubbub of the fair. The sun— 
for the morning was still fresh—did not yet 
pierce to the bottom of the valley, but fell on 
the hillside opposite, where cottage-gardens in 
parallel strips climbed up from the town to the 
moorland beyond. 

“What is that?” asked the goose-driver, 
touching my arm and pointing to a dazzling 
spot on the slope opposite. 

“'That’s the sun on the windows of Gardener 
Tonken’s glass-house.” 

“ Eh ?—does he live there ?” 

“He’s dead, and the garden’s ‘to let;’ you 
can just see the board from here. But he didn’t 
live there, of course. People don’t live in glass- 
houses; only plants.” 


FORTUNIO. 11 


“That’s a pity, little boy, for their souls’ 
sakes. It reminds me of a story—by the way, 
do you know Latin? No? Well, listen to 
this :—if I can sell my geese to-day, perhaps I 
will hire that glass-house, and you shall come 
there on half holidays, and learn Latin. Now 
run ahead and spend your money.” 

I was glad to escape, and in the bustle of the 
fair quickly forgot my friend. But late in the 
afternoon, as I had my eyes glued to a peep- 
show, I heard a voice behind me cry “ Little 
boy!” and turning, saw him again. He was 
without his geese. 

“T have sold them,” he said, “for £5; and I 
have taken the glass-house. The rent is only 
£3 a year, and I shan’t live longer, so that leaves 
me money to buy books. I shall feed on the 
snails in the garden, making soup of them, for 
there is a beautiful stove in the glass-house. 
When is your next half-holiday ?” 

“On Saturday.” 

“Very well Iam going away to buy books; 
but I shall be back by Saturday, and then you 
are to come and learn Latin.” 


12 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


—_— 


It may have been fear or curiosity, certainly 
it was no desire for learning, that took me to 
Gardener Tonken’s glass-house next Saturday 
afternoon. The goose-driver was there to wel- 
come me. 

“Ah, wide-mouth,” he cried; “I knew you 
would be here. Come and see my library.” 

He showed me a pile of dusty, tattered 
volumes, arranged on an old flower-stand. 

“See,” said he, “no sorrowful books, only 
Aristophanes and Lucian, Horace, Rabelais, 
Moliére, Voltaire’s novels, ‘Gil Blas,” ‘Don 
Quixote,’ Fielding, a play or two of Shakespeare, 
a volume or so of Swift, Prior’s Poems, and ~ 
Sterne—that divine Sterne! And a Latin 
Grammar and Virgil for you, little boy. First, 
eat some snails.” 

‘ But this I would not. So he pulled out two 
three-legged stools, and very soon I was trying 
to fix my wandering wits and decline mensa. 


After this I came on every half-holiday for 
nearly a year. Of course the tenant of the 
glass-house was a nine days’ wonder in the town. 


FORTUNIO. 13 





A crowd of boys and even many grown men 
and women would assemble and stare into the 
glass-house while we worked; but Fortunio (he 
gave no other name) seemed rather to like it 
than not. Only when some wiseacres approached 
my parents with hints that my studies with a 
ragged man who lived on snails and garden-stuff 
were uncommonly like traffic with the devil, 
Fortunio, hearing the matter, walked over one 
morning to our home and had an interview with 
my mother. I don’t know what was said; but I 
know that afterwards no resistance was made to 
my visits to the glass-house. 

They came to an end in the saddest and 
most natural way. One September afternoon I 
sat construing to Fortunio out of the first book 
of Virgil’s “ Aineid”—so far was I advanced ; 
and coming to the passage— 

‘* Tum breviter Dido, vultum demissa, profatur” . ... . 
I had just rendered vultum demissa “with 
downcast eyes,” when the book ‘was snatched 
from me and hurled to the far end of the glass- 
house. Looking up, I saw Fortunio in a trans- 
port of passion. 


12 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


__ 


It may have been fear or curiosity, certainly 
it was no desire for learning, that took me to 
Gardener Tonken’s glass-house next Saturday 
afternoon. The goose-driver was there to wel- 
come me. 

“Ah, wide-mouth,” he cried; “I knew you 
would be here. Come and see my library.” 

He showed me a pile of dusty, tattered 
volumes, arranged on an old flower-stand. 

“See,” said he, “no sorrowful books, only 
Aristophanes and Lucian, Horace, Rabelais, 
Moliére, Voltaire’s novels, ‘Gil Blas” ‘Don 
Quixote,’ Fielding, a play or two of Shakespeare, 
a volume or so of Swift, Prior’s Poems, and ~ 
Sterne—that divine Sterne! And a Latin 
Grammar and Virgil for you, little boy. First, 
eat some snails.” 

‘ But this I would not. So he pulled out two 
three-legged stools, and very soon I was trying 
to fix my wandering wits and decline mensa. 


After this I came on every half-holiday for 
nearly a year. Of course the tenant of the 
glass-house was a nine days’ wonder in the town. 


FORTUNIO. 13 





A crowd of boys and even many grown men 
and women would assemble and stare into the 
glass-house while we worked; but Fortunio (he 
gave no other name) seemed rather to like it 
than not. Only when some wiseacres approached 
my parents with hints that my studies with a 
ragged man who lived on snails and garden-stuff 
were uncommonly like traffic with the devil, 
Fortunio, hearing the matter, walked over one 
morning to our home and had an interview with 
my mother. I don’t know what was said; but I 
know that afterwards no resistance was made to 
my visits to the glass-house. 

They came to an end in the saddest and 
most natural way. One September afternoon I 
sat construing to Fortunio out of the first book 
of Virgil’s “ Aneid”—so far was I advanced ; 
and coming to the passage— 

‘* Tum breviter Dido, vultum demissa, profatur” . ... . 
I had just rendered vultum demissa “with 
downcast eyes,” when the book ‘was snatched 
from me and hurled to the far end of the glass- 
house. Looking up, I saw Fortunio in a trans- 
port of passion. 


16 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


As I entered on tiptoe, I heard— 

“, . . in that kingdom shall be no 
weeping——” 

“Oh, Parson,” interrupted Fortunio, “that’s 
bad. I’m so bored with laughing that the good 
God might surely allow a few tears.” 

The parish buried him, and his books went 
to pay for the:funeral. But I kept the Virgil ; 
and this, with the few memories that I impart 


to you, is all that remains to me of Fortunio. 


THE OUTLANDISH LADIES. 


A MILE beyond the fishing village, as you follow 
the road that climbs inland towards Tregarrick, 
the two tall hills to right and left of the coombe 
diverge to make room for a third, set like a 
wedge in the throat of the vale. Here the road 
branches into two, with a sign-post at the angle; 
and between the sign-post and the grey scarp of 
the hill there lies an acre of waste ground that 
the streams have turned into a marsh. This is 
Loose-heels. Long before I learnt the name’s 
meaning, in the days when I trod the lower road 
with slate and satchel, this spot was a favourite 
of mine—but chiefly in July, when the monkey- 
flower was out, and the marsh aflame with it. 
There was a spell in that yellow blossom 
with the wicked blood-red spots, that held me 
its mere slave. Also the finest grew in desper- 
ate places. So that, day after day, when July 
came round, my mother would cry shame on 


my small-clothes, and my father take exercise 
Cc 


18 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


upon them; and all the month I went tingling. 
They were pledged to “break me of it”; but 
they never did. Now they are dead, and the 
flowers—the flowers last always, as Victor Hugo 
says. When, after many years, I revisited the 
valley, the stream had carried the seeds half a 
mile below Loose-heels, and painted its banks 
with monkey-blossoms all the way. But the 
finest, I was glad to see, still inhabited the 
marsh. 

Now, it is rare to find this plant growing 
wild; for, in fact, it is a garden flower. And its 
history here is connected witha bit of mud wall, 
ruined and covered with mosses and ragwort, 
that still pushed up from the swampy ground 
when I knew it, and had once been part of a 
cottage. How a cottage came here, and how 
its inhabitants entered and went out, are ques- 
tions past guessing; for the marsh hemmed it 
in on three sides, and the fourth is a slope of 
hill fit to break your neck. But there was the 
wall, and here is the story. 


One morning, near the close of the last 


THE OUTLANDISH LADIES. 19 


century, a small child came running down to 
the village with news that the cottage, which 
for ten years had stood empty, was let; there 
was smoke coming out at the chimney, and an 
outlandish lady walking in the garden. Being 
catechised, he added that the lady wore bassomy 
bows in her cap, and had accosted him in a 
heathen tongue that caused him to flee, fearing 
worse things. This being told, two women, 
rulers of their homes, sent their husbands up 
the valley to spy, who found the boy had spoken 
truth. 

Smoke was curling from the chimney, and 
in the garden the lady was still moving about— 
a small yellow creature, with a wrinkled but 
pleasant face, white curls, and piercing black 
eyes. She wore a black gown, cut low in the 
neck, a white kerchief, and bassomy (or purplish) 
bows in her cap as the child had stated. Just 
at present she was busy with a spade, and 
showed an ankle passing neat for her age, as 
she turned up the neglected mould. When the 
men plucked up gallantry enough to offer their 
services, she smiled and thanked them in 

C2 


20 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


broken English, but said that her small forces 
would serve. 

So they went back to their wives; and their 
wives, recollecting that the cottage formed part 
of the glebe, went off to inquire of Parson Morth, 
“than whom,” as the tablet to his memory re- 
lates, “none was better to castigate the manners 
of the age.” He was a burly, hard-riding ruffian, 
and the tale of his great fight with Gipsy Ben in 
Launceston streets is yet told on the country- 
side. 

Parson Morth wanted to know if he couldn’t 
let his cottage to an invalid lady and her sister 
without consulting every wash-mouth in the 
parish. 

“Aw, so there’s two!” said one of them, 
nodding her head. “But tell us, Parson dear, 
ef ’tes fitty for two unmated women to come 
trapesing down in a po’shay at dead o’ night, 
when all modest flesh be in their bed-gowns ?” 

Upon this the Parson’s language became 
grossly indelicate, after the fashion of those 
days. He closed his peroration by slamming 
the front door on his visitors; and they went 


THE OUTLANDISH LADIES. 21 


down the hill “blushing” (as they said) “all over, 
at his intimate words.” 

So nothing more was known of the strangers. 
But it was noticed that Parson Morth, when he 
passed the cottage on his way to meet or 
market, would pull up his mare, and, if the out- 
landish lady were working in the garden, would 
doff his hat respectfully. 

“Bon jour, Mamzelle Henriette”—this was 
all the French the Parson knew. And the lady 
would smile back and answer in English. 

“Good-morning, Parson Morth.” 

“And Mamzelle Lucille ?” 

“Ah, just the same,my God! All the day 
stare—stare. If you had known her before !— 
so be-eautiful, so gifted, si bien dlevée! Itis an 
affliction: but I think she loves the flowers.” 

And the Parson rode on with a lump in his 
throat. 


So two years passed, during which Made- 
moiselle Henriette tilled her garden and turned 
it into a paradise. There were white roses on 
the south wall, and in the beds mignonette and 


22 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES, 


a 


boy’s-love, pansies, carnations, gillyflowers, sweet- 
williams, and flaming great hollyhocks; above 
all, the yellow monkey-blossoms that throve so 
well in the marshy soil. And all that while no 
one had caught so much as a glimpse of her 
sister, Lucille. Also how they lived was a 
marvel, The outlandish lady bought neither 
fish, nor butcher’s meat, nor bread. ‘To be sure, 
the Parson sent down a pint of milk every 
morning from his dairy; the can was left at the 
garden-gate and fetched at noon, when it was 
always found neatly scrubbed, with the price of 
the milk inside. Besides, there was a plenty of 
vegetables in the garden. 

But this was not enough to avert the whisper 
of witchcraft. And one day, when Parson Morth 
had ridden off to the wrestling matches at 
Exeter, the blow fell. 

Farmer Anthony of Carne — great-grand- 
father of the present farmer—had been losing 
sheep. Now, not a man in the neighbour- 
hood would own to having stolen them; so 
what so easy to suspect as witchcraft? Who 
so fatally open to suspicion as the two out- 


THE OUTLANDISH LADIES. 23 





landish sisters? Men, wives, and children 
formed a procession. 

The month was July; and Mademoiselle 
Henriette was out in the garden, a bunch of 
monkey-flowers in her hand, when they arrived. 
She turned all white, and began to tremble like 
a leaf. But when the spokesman stated the 
charge, there was another tale. 

“Tt was an infamy. Steal! She would have 
them know that she and her sister were of good 
West Indian family—trés bien élevées.’ Then 
followed a torrent of epithets. They were ldches 
—poltrons. Why were they not fighting Bona- 
parte, instead of sending their wives up to the 
cliffs, dressed in red cloaks, to scare him away, 
while they bullied weak women ? 

They pushed past her. The cottage held 
two rooms on the ground floor. In the kitchen, 
which they searched first, they found only some 
garden-stuff and a few snails salted in a pan. 
There was a door leading to the inner room, and 
the foremost had his hand on it, when Made- 
moiselle Henriette rushed before him, and 
flung herself at his feet. The yellow monkey 


24 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


blossoms were scattered and trampled on the 
floor. 

“Ah—non, non, messieurs! Je vous prie— 
Elle est si—si horrible !” 

They flung her down, and pushed on. 

The invalid sister lay in an arm-chair with 
her back to the doorway, a bunch of monkey- 
flowers beside her. As they burst in, she 
started, laid both hands on the arms of her 
chair, and turned her face slowly upon them. 

She was a leper! 

They gave one look at that featureless face, 
with the white scales shining upon it, and ran 
back with their arms lifted before their eyes. 
One woman screamed. Then a dead still- 
ness fell on the place, and the cottage was © 
empty. 

On the following Saturday Parson Morth 
walked down to the inn, just ten minutes after 
stalling his mare. He strode into the tap-room 
in his muddy boots, took two men by the neck, 
knocked their skulls together, and then de- 
manded to hear the truth. 

“Very well,” he said, on hearing the tale; 


THE OUTLANDISH LADIES. 25 





“to-morrow I march every man Jack of you up 
to the valley, if it’s by the scruff of your necks, 
and in the presence of both of those ladies—of 
both, mark you—you shall kneel down and ask 
them to come to church. I don’t care if I 
empty the building. Your fathers (who were 
men, not curs) built the south transept for those 
same poor souls, and cut a slice in the chancel 
arch through which they might see the Host 
lifted. That's where you sit, Jim Trestrail, 
churchwarden; and by the Lord Harry, they 
shall have your pew.” 

He marched them up the very next morn- 
ing. He knocked, but no one answered. After 
waiting a while, he put his shoulder against the 
door, and forced it in. 

There was no one in the kitchen. In the 
inner room one sister sat in the arm-chair. It 
was Mademoiselle Henriette, cold and stiff Her 
dead hands were stained with earth. 

At the back of the cottage they came on a 
freshly-formed mound, and stuck on the top of 
it a piece of slate, such as children erect over a 
thrush’s grave. 


26 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


On it was scratched— 
(0-Git 
LUCILLE, 
Jadis si Belle ; 
Dont dia-neuf Jewnes Hommes, Plantewrs de 
Samnt DOMINGUE. 
ont demandé la Marn. 


Mais LA PETITE NE VoutaAiT PAS. 
R. I. P. 


This is the story of Loose-heels, otherwise 
Lucille’s, 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT, 
HIGHWAYMAN. 


THE jury re-entered the court after half an 
hour’s consultation. 

It all comes back to me as vividly as though 
I stood in the dock at this very moment. The 
dense fog that hung over the well of the court; 
the barristers’ wigs that bobbed up through it, 
and were drowned again in that seething caul- 
dron ; the rays of the guttering candles (for the 
murder-trial had lasted far into the evening) 
that loomed through it and wore a sickly halo; 
the red robes and red face of my lord judge 
opposite that stared through it and outshone the 
candles; the black crowd around, seen mistily; 
the voice of the usher calling “Silence!”; 
the shuffling of the jurymen’s feet; the pallor 
on their faces as I leant forward and tried to 
read the verdict on them; the very smell of 
the place, compounded of fog, gaol-fever, the 
close air, and the dinners eaten earlier in the 


28 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


day by the crowd—all this strikes home upon 
me as sharply as it then did, after the numb 
apathy of waiting. 

As the jury huddled into their places I stole 
a look at my counsel. He paused for a moment 
from his task of trimming a quill, shot a quick 
glance at the foreman’s face, and then went on 
cutting as coolly as ever. 

“Gentlemen of the jury ”—it was the judge’s 
voice—* are you agreed upon your verdict ?” 

“We are.” 

“Do you find the prisoner guilty or not 
euilty ?” 

'  & Not guilty.” 

It must have been full a minute, as I leant 
back clutching the rail in front of me, before 
I saw anything but the bleared eyes of the 
candles, or heard anything but a hoarse murmur 
from the crowd. But as soon as the court 
ceased to heave, and I could stare about me, 
I looked towards my counsel again. 

He was still shaping his pen. He made no 
motion to come forward and shake hands over 
my acquittal, for which he had worked un- 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT, 29 


tiringly all day. He did not even offer to 
speak. He just looked up, nodded carelessly, 
and turned to his junior beside him; but in 
that glance I had read something which turned 
my heart cold, then sick, within me, and from 
that moment my hatred of the man was as deep 


as hell. 


In the fog outside I got clear of the gaping 
crowd, but the chill of the night after that 
heated court pierced my very bones. I had 
on the clothes I had been taken in. It was 
June then, and now it was late in October. I 
remember that on the day when they caught 
me I wore my coat open for coolness. Four 
months and a half had gone out of my life. 
Well, I had money enough in my pocket to 
get a greatcoat; but I must put something 
warm inside me first, to get out the chill that 
cursed lawyer had laid on my heart. 

I had purposely chosen the by-lanes of the 
town, but I remembered a certain tavern—the 
“Lamb and Flag”—which lay down a side alley. 
Presently the light from its windows struck 


30 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


across the street, ahead. I pushed open the 
door and entered. 

The small bar was full of people newly come 
from the court, and discussing the trial in all 
its bearings. In the babel I heard a dozen 
different opinions given in as many seconds. 
and learnt enough, too, to make me content 
with the jury I had had. But the warmth of 
the place was pleasant, and I elbowed my way 
forward to the counter. 

There was a woman standing by the door as I 
entered, who looked curiously at me for a moment, 
then turned to nudge a man at her side, and 
whisper. The whisper grew as I pressed for- 
ward, and before I could reach the counter a hand 
was laid on my shoulder from behind. I turned. 

“Well?” said I. 

It was a heavy-looking drover that had 
touched me. 

“ Are you the chap that was tried to-day for 
murder of Jeweller Todd ?” he asked 

“Well?” said I again, but I could see the 
crowd falling back, as if I was a leper, at his 
question. 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT. 31 


“Well? ’T aint well then, as I reckon, to 
be making so free with respectable folk.” 

There was a murmur of assent from the 
mouths turned towards me. The landlord 
came forward from behind the bar. 

“TI was acquitted,” I urged defiantly. 

“ Ac-quitted!” said he, with big scorn in the 
syllables. “Hear im now—‘ac-quitted!’ Land- 
lord, is this a respectable house ?” 

The landlord gave his verdict. 

“Hout yer goes, and damn yer impudence !” 

I looked round, but their faces were all dead 
against me. 

“Hout yer goes!” repeated the landlord. 
“And think yerself lucky it aint worse,” added 
the drover. 

With no further defence I slunk out into the 
night once more. 

A small crowd of children (Heaven knows 
whence or how they gathered) followed me up 
the court and out into the street. Their num- 
bers swelled as I went on, and some began to 
hoot and pelt me; but when I gained the top 
of the hill, and a lonelier district, I turned 


32 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


—— 


and struck among them with my stick. It did 
_ my heart good to hear their screams. 

After that I was let alone, and tramped 
forward past the scattered houses, towards the 
open country and the moors. Up here there 
was scarcely any fog, but I could see it, by 
the rising moon, hanging like a shroud over 
the town below. The next town was near upon 
twelve miles off, but I do not remember that 
I thought of getting so far. I could not have 
thought at all, in fact, or I should hardly have 
taken the high-road upon which the jeweller 
had been stopped and murdered. 

There was a shrewd wind blowing, and I 
shivered all over; but the cold at my heart 
was worse, and my hate of the man who had 
set it there grew with every step. I thought 
of the four months and more which parted the 
two lives of Gabriel Foot, and what I should 
make of the newone. I had my chance again— 
a chance gained for me beyond hope by that 
counsel but for whom I should be sleeping 
to-night in the condemned cell; a chance, 
and a good chance, but for that same cursed 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT, 33 


lawyer. Ugh! how cold it was, and how I 
hated him for it! 

There was a little whitewashed cottage on 
the edge of the moorland just after the hedge- 
rows ceased—the last house before the barren 
heath began, standing a full three hundred 
yards from any other dwelling. Its front faced 
the road, and at the back an outhouse and a 
wretched garden jutted out on the waste land. 
There was a light in each of its windows to- 
night, and as I passed down the road I heard 
the dismal music of a flute. 

Perhaps it was this that jogged my thoughts 
and woke them up to my present pass. At any 
rate, I had not gone more than twenty yards 
before I turned and made for the door. The 
people might give me a night’s lodging in the 
outhouse; at any rate, they would not refuse a 
crust to stay the fast which I had not broken 
since the morning. I tapped gently with my 
knuckles on the door, and listened. 

I waited five minutes, and no one answered. 
The flute still continued its melancholy tune; 


it was evidently in the hands of a learner, for 
D 


34 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


the air (a dispiriting one enough at tne best) 
kept breaking off suddenly and repeating itself. 
But the performer had patience, and the sound 
never ceased for more than two seconds at a 
time. Besides this, nothing could be heard. 
The blinds were drawn in all the windows. 
The glow of the candles through them was 
cheerful enough, but nothing could be seen 
of the house inside. I knocked a second time, 
and a third, with the same result. Finally, 
tired of this, I pushed open the low gate which 
led into the garden behind, and stole round to 
the back of the cottage. 

Here, too, the window on the ground floor 
was lit up behind its blinds, but that of the 
room above was shuttered. There was a hole 
in the shutter, however, where a knot of the 
wood had fallen out, and a thin shaft of light 
stretched across the blackness and buried itself 
in a ragged yew-tree at the end of the garden. 
From the loudness of the sounds I judged this 
to be the room where the flute-playing was 
going on. The crackling of my footsteps on 
the thin soil did not disturb the performer, so 


4 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT. 35 


I gathered a handful of earth and pitched it 
up against the pane. The flute stopped for a 
minute or so, but just as I was expecting to 
see the shutter open, went on again: this time 
the air was “ Pretty Polly Oliver.” 

I crept back again, and began to hammer 
more loudly at the door. “Come,” said I, “ who- 
ever this may be inside, I'll see for myself at 
any rate,” and with that I lifted the latch and 
gave the door a heavy kick. It flew open quite 
easily (it had not even been locked), and I found 
myself in a low kitchen. The room was empty, 
but the relics of supper lay on the deal table, 
and the remains of what must have been a 
noble fire were still smouldering on the hearth- 
stone. A crazy, rusty blunderbuss hung over 
the fireplace. This, with a couple of rough 
chairs, a broken bacon-rack, and a small side- 
table, completed the furniture of the place. 
No; for as I sat down to make a meal off the 
remnants of supper, something lying on the 
lime-ash floor beneath this side-table caught 
my eye. I stepped forward and picked it up. 


It was a barrister’s wig. 
D2 


36 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“This is a queer business,” thought I; and 
I laid it on the table opposite me as I went 
on with my supper. It was a “gossan” wig, 
as we call it in our parts; a wig grown yellow 
and rusty with age and wear. It looked so sly 
and wicked as it lay there, and brought back 
the events of the day so sharply that a queer 
dread took me of being discovered with it. I 
pulled out my pistol, loaded it (they had given 
me back both the powder and pistol found on 
me when I was taken), and laid it beside my 
plate. This done, I went on with my supper— 
it was an excellent cold capon—and all the 
time the flute up-stairs kept toot-tootling with- 
out stopping, except to change the tune. It 
gave me “Hearts of Oak,” “Why, Soldiers, 
why?” “Like Hermit Poor,” and “Come, Lasses 
and lads,” before I had fairly cleared the 
dish. 

“And now,” thought I, “I have had a good 
supper; but there are still three things to be 
done. In the first place I want drink, in the 
second I want a bed, and in the third I want 
to thank this kind person, whoever he is, for 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT. 37 


his hospitality. I’m not going to begin life 
No. 2 with housebreaking.” < 

I rose, slipped the pistol into my tail-pocket, 
and followed the sound up the ramshackle stairs. 
My footsteps made such a racket on their old 
timbers as fairly to frighten me, but it never 
disturbed the flute-player. He had harked back 
again to “Like Hermit Poor” by this time, and 
the dolefulness of it was fit to make the dead 
ery out, but he went whining on until I reached 
the head of the stairs and struck a rousing 
knock on the door. 

The playing stopped. “Come in,” said a 
cheery voice; but it gave me no cheerfulness. 
Instead of that, it sent all the comfort of my 
supper clean out of me, as I opened the door 
and saw him sitting there. 

There he was, the man who had saved my 
neck that day, and whom most I hated in the 
world, sitting before a snug fire, with his flute 
on his knee, a glass of port wine at his elbow, 
and looking so comfortable, with that knowing 
light in his grey eyes, that I could have killed 
him where he sat. 


38 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“Qh, it’s you, is it?” he said, just the very 
least bit surprised and no more. “Come in.” 

I stood in the doorway hesitating. 

“ Don’t stay letting in that monstrous draught, 
man; but sit down. You'll find the bottle on 
the table and a glass on the shelf.” 

I poured out a glassful and drank it off. 
The stuff was rare (I can remember its trick 
on the tongue to this day), but somehow it did 
not drive the cold out of my heart. I took 
another glass, and sat sipping it and staring 
from the fire to my companion. 

He had taken up the flute again, and was 
blowing a few deep notes out of it, thoughtfully 
enough. He was a small, squarely-built man, 
with a sharp ruddy face like a frozen pippin, 
heavy grey eyebrows, and a mouth like a trap 
when it was not pursed up for that everlasting 
flute. As he sat there with his wig off, the 
crown of his bald head was fringed with an 
obstinate-looking patch of hair, the colour of a 
badger’s. My amazement at finding him here 
at this hour, and alone, was lost in my hatred of 
the man as I saw the depths of complacent 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT. 39 


knowledge in his face. I felt that I must 
kill him sooner or later, and the sooner the 
better. 

Presently he laid down his flute again and 
spoke :— 

“T scarcely expected you.” 

I grunted something in answer. 

“But I might have known something was 
up, if I’d only paid attention to my flute. It 
and I are not in harmony to-night. It doesn’t 
like the secrets I’ve been blowing into it; it has 
heard a lot of queer things in its time, but it’s 
an innocent-minded flute for all that, and ’m 
afraid that what I’ve told it to-night is a point 
beyond what it’s prepared to go.” 

“T take it, it knows a damned deal too much,” 
growled I. 

He looked at me sharply for an instant, rose, 
whistled a bar or two of “Like Hermit Poor,” 
reached down a couple of clay pipes from the 
shelf, filled one for himself, and gravely handed 
the other with the tobacco to me. 

“Beyond what it is prepared to go,” he 
echoed quietly, sinking back in his chair and 


40 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


puting at the pipe. “It’s a nice point that we 
have been discussing together, my flute and I, 
and I won’t say but that I’ve got the worst of 
it. By the way, what do you mean to do now 
that you have a fresh start ?” 

Now I had not tasted tobacco for over four 
months, and its effect upon my wits was surpris- 
ing. It seemed to oil my thoughts till they 
worked without a hitch, and I saw my plan of 
action marked out quite plainly before me. 

“Do you want to know the first step of all?” 
I asked. 

“To be sure; the first step at any rate 
determines the direction.” 

“ Well then,” said I, very steadily, and staring 
into his face, “the first step of all is that I am 
going to kill you.” 

“Hm,” said he after a bit, and I declare that 
not so much as an eyelash of the man shook, “I 
thought as much I guessed that when you 
came into the room. And what next?” 

“Time enough then to think .of ‘what 
next,” I answered; for though I was set upon 
blowing his brains out, I longed for him to blaze 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT. 41 





out into a passion and warm up my blood for 
the job. 

“Pardon me,” he said, as coolly as might be, 
“that would be the very worst time to think of 
it. For, just consider: in the first place you will 
already be committed to your way of life, and 
secondly, if I know anything about you, you 
would be far too much flurried for any thought 
worth the name.” 

There was a twinkle of frosty humour in his 
eye as he said this, and in the silence which 
followed I could hear him chuckling to himself, 
and tasting the words over again as though they 
were good wine. I sat fingering my pistol and 
waiting for him to speak again. When he did 
so, it was with another dry chuckle and a long 
puff of tobacco smoke. 

“ As you say, I know a deal too much. Shall 
I tell you how much ?” 

“Yes, you may if you'll be quick about it.” 

“Very well, then, I will, Do you mind pass- 
ing the bottle? Thank you. I probably know 
not only too much, but a deal more than you 
guess. First let us take the case for the Crown. 


42 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





The jeweller is travelling by coach at night over 
the moors. He has one postillion only, Roger 
Tallis by name, and by character shady. The 
jeweller has money (he was a niggardly fool to 
take only one postillion), and carries a diamond 
of great, or rather of an enormous and notable 
value (he was a bigger fool to take this). In the 
dark morning two horses come galloping back, 
frightened and streaming with sweat. A search 
party goes out, finds the coach upset by the 
Four Holed Cross, the jeweller lying beside it 
with a couple of pistol bullets in him, and the 
money, the diamond, and Roger Tallis—no- 
where. So much for the murdered man. Two 
or three days after, you, Gabriel Foot, by charac- 
ter also shady, and known to be a friend of 
Roger Tallis, are whispered to have a suspicious 
amount of money about you, also blood-stains 
on your coat. It further leaks out that you 
were travelling on the moors afoot on the night 
in question, and that your pistols are soiled with 
powder. Case for the Crown closes. Have I 
stated it correctly ?” 

I nodded; he took a sip or two at his wine, 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT. 43 





laid down his pipe as if the tobacco spoiled 
the taste of it, took another sip, and cor.- 
tinued :— 

“Case for the defence. That Roger Tallis 
has decamped, that no diamond has been found 
on you (or anywhere), and lastly that the 
bullets in the jeweller’s body do not fit your 
pistols, but came from a larger pair. Not very 
much of a case, perhaps, but this last is a strong 
point.” 

“Well?” I asked, as he paused. 

“ Now then for the facts of the case. Would 
you oblige me by casting a look over there in 
the corner ?” 

“T see nothing but a pickaxe and shovel.” 

“Ha! very good; ‘nothing but a pickaxe 
and shovel.’ Well, to resume: facts of the case 
—Roger Tallis murders the jeweller, and you 
murder Roger Tallis; after that, as you say, 
‘nothing but a pickaxe and shovel.’” 

And with this, as I am a living sinner, the 
rosy-faced old boy took up his flute and blew a 
stave or two of “Come, Lasses and Lads.” 

“Did you dig him up?” I muttered hoarsely; 


44 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





and although deathly cold I could feel a drop c: 
sweat trickling down my forehead and into my 
eye. 

“What, before the trial? My good sir, you 
have a fair, a very fair, aptitude for crime, but 
believe me, you have much to learn both of 
legal etiquette and of a lawyer’s conscience.” 
And for the first time since I came in I saw 
something like indignation on his ruddy face. 

“Now,” he continued, “I either know too 
much or not enough. Obviously I know enough 
for you to wish, and perhaps wisely, to kill me. 
The question is, whether I know enough to 
make it worth your while to spare me. I think 
I do; but that is for you to decide. If I put 
you to-night, and in half an hour’s time, in 
possession of property worth ten thousand 
pounds, will that content you ?” 

“Come, come,” I said, “you need not try to 
fool me, nor think I am going to let you out of 
my sight.” 

“You misunderstand. I desire neither; I only 
wish a bargain. Iam realy to pledge you my 
word to make no attempt to escape before you 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT. 45 


are in possession of that property, and to offer 
no resistance to your shooting me in case you 
fail to obtain it, provided on the other hand you 
pledge your word to spare my life should you 
succeed within half an hour. And, my dear sir, 
considering the relative value of your word and 
mine, I think it must be confessed you have the 
better of the bargain.” 

I thought for a moment. “Very well then,” 
said I, “so be it; but if you fail——” 

“TI know what happens,” replied he. 

With that he blew a note or two on his flute, 
took it to pieces, and carefully bestowed it in the 
tails of his coat. I put away my pistol in mine. 

“Do you mind shouldering that spade and 
pickaxe, and following me?” he asked. I took 
them up in silence. He drained his glass and 
put on his hat. 

“Now I think we are ready. Stop a 
moment.” 

He reached across for the glass which I had 
emptied, took it up gingerly between thumb and 
forefinger, and tossed it with a crash on to the 
hearthstone. He then did the same to my pipe, 


46 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


after first snapping the stem into halves. This 
done, he blew out one candle, and with great 
gravity led the way down the staircase. I 
shouldered the tools and followed, while my 
heart hated him with a fiercer spite than 
ever. 

We passed down the crazy stairs and through 
the kitchen. The candles were still burning 
there. As my companion glanced at the supper- 
table, “ H’m,” he said, “not a bad beginning of a 
new leaf. My friend, I will allow you exactly 
twelve months in which to get hanged.” 

I made no answer, and we stepped out into 
the night. The moon was now up, and the 
high-road stretched like a white ribbon into the 
gloom. The cold wind bore up a few heavy 
clouds from the north-west, but for the most 
part we could see easily enough. We trudged 
side by side along the road in silence, except 
that I could hear my companion every now and 
then whistling softly to himself. 

As we drew near to the Four Holed Cross 
and the scene of the murder I confess to an 
uneasy feeling and a desire to get past the place 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT, 47 


with all speed. But the lawyer stopped by the 
very spot where the coach was overturned, and 
held up a finger as if to call attention. It was a 
favourite trick of his with the jury. 

“This was where the jeweller lay. Some 
fifteen yards off there was another pool of blood. 
Now the jeweller must have dropped instantly 
for he was shot through the heart. Yet no one 
doubted but that the other pool of blood was 
his. Fools!” 

With this he turned off the road at right 
angles, and began to strike rapidly across the 
moor. At first I thought he was trying to 
escape me, but he allowed me to catch him up 
readily enough, and then I knew the point for 
which he was making. I followed doggedly. 
Clouds began to gather over the moon’s face, 
and every now and then I stumbled heavily on 
the uneven ground; but he moved along nimbly 
enough, and even cried “Shoo!” in a sprightly 
voice when a startled plover flew up before his 
feet. Presently, after we had gone about five 
hundred yards on the heath, the ground broke 
away into a little hollow, where a rough track led 


48 NOUGATS AND CROSSES. 


down to the Lime Kilns and the thinly wooded 
stream that washed the valley below. We 
followed this track for ten minutes or so, and 
presently the masonry of the disused kilns 
peered out, white in the moonlight, from 
between the trees. 

There were three of these kilns standing 
close together beside the path; but my com- 
panion without hesitation pulled up almost 
beneath the very arch of the first, peered about, 
examined the ground narrowly, and then 
motioned to me. 

“ Dig here.” 

“If we both know well enough what is 
underneath, what is the use of digging ?” 

“T very much doubt if we do,’ said he. 
“ You had better dig.” 


I can feel the chill creeping down my back 
as I write of it; but at the time, though I well 
knew the grisly sight which I was to discover, I 
dug away steadily enough. The man who had 
surprised my secret set himself down on a dark 
bank of ferns at about ten paces’ distance, and 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT. 49 





began to whistle softly, though I could see his 
fingers fumbling with his coat-tails as though 
they itched to be at the flute again. 

The moon’s rays shone fitfully upon the 
white face of the kiln, and lit up my work. The 
little stream rushed noisily below. And so, with 
this hateful man watching, I laid bare the lime- 
burnt remains of the comrade whom, almost five 
months before, I had murdered and _ buried 
there. How I had then cursed my luck be- 
cause forced to hide his corpse away before 
I could return and search for the diamond 
I had failed to find upon his body! But 
as I tossed the earth and lime aside, and dis- 
covered my handiwork, the moon’s rays were 
suddenly caught and reflected from within 
the pit, and I fell forward with a short gasp 
of delight. 

For there, kindled into quick shafts and 
points of colour—violet, green, yellow, and 
fieriest red—lay the missing diamond among 
Roger’s bones. As I clutched the gem a black 
shadow fell between the moon and me I 


looked up. My companion was standing over 
E 


50 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


me, with the twinkle still in his eye and the flute 
in his hand. 

“You were a fool not to guess that he had 
swallowed it. I hope you are satisfied with the 
bargain. As we are not, I trust, likely to meet 
again in this world, I will here bid you Adieu, 
though possibly that is scarcely the word to use. 
But there is one thing I wish to tell you. I owe 
you a debt to-night for having prevented me 
from committing a crime. You saw that I had 
the spade and pickaxe ready in the cottage. 
Well, I confess I lusted for that gem. I was 
arguing out the case with my flute when you 
came in.” 


23 





“Tf” said I, “ you wish a share 

“ Another word,” he interrupted very gravely, 
“and I shall be forced to think that you insult 
me. As it is, ] am grateful to you for support- 
ing my flute’s advice at an opportune moment. 
I will now leave you. Two hours ago I was in 
a fair way of becoming a criminal. I owe it to 
you, and to my flute, that I am still merely a 
lawyer. Farewell!” 

With that he turned on his heel and was 


STATEMENT OF GABRIEL FOOT. 51 


gone with a swinging stride up the path and 
across the moor. His figure stood out upon the 
sky-line for a moment, and then vanished. But — 
I could hear for some time the tootle-tootle of 
his flute in the distance, and it struck me that 
its note was unusually sprightly and clear. 


E 2 








THE RETURN OF JOANNA. 


HicH and low, rich and poor, in Troy Town 
there are seventy-three maiden ladies. Under 
this term, of course, I include only those who 
may reasonably be supposed to have forsworn 
matrimony. And of the seventy-three, the two 
Misses Lefanu stand first, as well from their 
age and extraction (their father was an Admiral 
of the Blue) as because of their house, which 
stands in Fore Street and is faced with polished 
Luxulyan granite—the same that was used for 
the famous Duke of Wellington’s coffin in St. 
Paul’s Cathedral. 

Miss Susan Lefanu is eighty-five; Miss 
Charlotte has just passed seventy-six. They 
are extremely small, and Miss Bunce looks 
after them. That is to say, she dresses them of 
a morning, arranges their chestnut “fronts,” 
sets their caps straight, and takes them down to 
breakfast. After dinner (which happens in the 
middle of the day) she dresses them again and 


54 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


conducts them for a short walk along the Rope- 
walk, which they call “the Esplanade.” In the 
evening she brings out the Bible and sets it the 
right way up for Miss Susan, who begins to medi- 
tate on her decease ; then sits down to a game 
of écarté with Miss Charlotte, who as yet has 
not turned her thoughts upon mortality. At 
ten she puts them to bed. Afterwards, “the 
good Bunce ”—who is fifty, looks like a grena- 
dier, and wears a large mole on her chin—takes 
up a French novel, fastened by a piece of 
elastic between the covers of Baxter’s “Saint’s 
Rest,” and reads for an hour before retiring. 
Her pay is fifty-two pounds a year, and her 
attachment to the Misses Lefanu a matter of 
inference rather than perception. 


One morning in last May, at nine o’clock, 
when Miss Bunce had just arranged the pair in 
front of their breakfast-plates, and was sitting 
down to pour out the tea, two singers came 
down the street, and their voices—a man’s and 
a woman’s—though not young, accorded very 
prettily :-— 





THE RETURN OF JOANNA. 55 


“ Citizens, toss your pens away ! 
For all the world is mad to-day— 
Cuckoo—cuckoo ! 
The world 1s mad to-day.” 


“What unusual words for a pair of street 
singers!” Miss Bunce murmured, setting down. 
the tea-pot. But as Miss Charlotte was busy 
cracking an egg, and Miss Susan in a sort of 
coma, dwelling perhaps on death and its terrors, 
the remark went unheeded. 


“ Citizens, doff your coats of black, 
And dress to suit the almanack— 
Cuckoo—” 


The voices broke off, and a rat-tat sounded 
on the front door. 

“Say that we never give to beggars, under 
any circumstances,” murmured Miss Susan, 
waking out of her lethargy. 

The servant entered with a scrap of crumpled 
paper in her hand. “There was a woman at the 
door who wished to see Miss Lefanu.” 

“Say that we never give——” Miss Susan 
began again, fumbling with the note. “Bunce, 


56 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


I have on my gold-rimmed spectacles, and can- 
not read with them, as you know. The black- 


9 





rimmed pair must be up-stairs, on the 

“How d’ye do, my dears?” interrupted a 
brisk voice. In the doorway stood a plump 
middle-aged woman, nodding her head rapidly. 
She wore a faded alpaca gown, patched here and 
there, a shawl of shepherd’s plaid stained with 
the weather, and a nondescript bonnet. Her 
face was red and roughened, as if she lived much 
out of doors. 

“How d’ye do?” she repeated “I’m Joanna.” 

Miss Bunce rose, and going discreetly to the | 
window, pretended to gaze into the street. 
Joanna, as she knew, was the name of the old 
ladies’ only step-sister, who had eloped from 
home twenty years before, and (it was whis- 
pered) had disgraced the family. As for the 
Misses Lefanu, being unused to rise without 
help, they spread out their hands as if stretch- 
ing octaves on the edge of the table, and feebly 
stared. 

“ Joanna,” began the elder, tremulously, “if 


” 





you have come to ask charity 


THE RETURN OF JOANNA. 57 


ec en a gene ee a 


“Bless your heart,no! What put that into 
your head?” She advanced and took the chair 
which Miss Bunce had left, and resting her 
elbows on the table, regarded her sisters steadily. 
“What a preposterous age you both must be, 
to be sure! My husband’s waiting for me out- 
side.” 

“Your husband?” Miss Charlotte quavered. 

“Why, of course. Did you suppose, because 
I ran away to act, that I wasn’t an honest 
woman?” She stretched out her left hand; 
and there was a thin gold ring on her third 
finger. “He isn’t much of an actor, poor dear. 
In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he has 
been hissed off two-and-thirty stages in Great 
Britain alone. Indeed, he’s the very worst 
actor I ever saw, although I don’t tell him. 
But as a husband he’s sublime.” 

“Are there——” Miss Charlotte began, and 
broke down. “Are there,” she tried again, “ are 
there—any—children ?” 

“Ah, my dear, if there were, I might be 
tempted to repent.” 

“Don't you?” jerked out Miss Bunce, 


58 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


et 


turning abruptly from the window. There was 
a certain sharp emotion in the question, but her 
face was in the shadow. Joanna regarded her 
for a moment or two and broke into a laugh. 

“My dears, I have been an actress and a 
mother. I retain the pride of both,—though 
my little one died at three months, and no 
manager will engage me now, because I refuse 
to act unless my husband has a part. Theoreti- 
cally, he is the first of artists; in practice—— 
You were asking, however, if I repent. Well, 
having touched the two chief prizes within a 
woman’s grasp, I hardly see how it is likely. I 
perceive that the object of my visit has been 
misinterpreted. To be frank, I came to gloat 
over you.” 

“Your step-sisters are at least respectable,” 
Miss Bunce answered. 

“Let us grant that to be a merit,” retorted 
Joanna: “Do I understand you to claim the 
credit of it?” 

“They are very clean, though,” she went on, 
looking from one to the other, “and well pre- 
served. Susan, I notice, shows signs of failing; 


THE RETURN OF JOANNA. 59 


she has dropped her spectacles into the tea- 





cup. But to what end, Miss——” 

“ Bunce.” 

“'To what end, Miss Bunce, are you preserv- 
ing them ?” 

“Madam, when you entered the room I was 
of your way of thinking. Book after book that 
I read”—Miss Bunce blushed at this point— 
“has displayed before me the delights of that 
quick artistic life that you glory in following. 
I have eaten out my heart in longing. But now 
that I see how it coarsens a women—for it 2s 
coarse to sneer at age, in spite of all you may 
say about uselessness being no better for being 


33 


protracted over much time 





“You are partly right,” Joanna interrupted, 
“although you mistake the accident for the 
essence. I am only coarse when confronted by 
respectability. Nevertheless, 1 am glad if I 
reconcile you to your lot.” 

“But the point is,” insisted Miss Bunce, 
“that a lady never forgets herself.” 

“ And you would argue that the being liable 
to forget myself is only another development of 


60 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


that very character by virtue of which I follow 
Art. Ah, well”—she nodded towards her step- 
sisters—“] ask you why they and I should be 
daughters of one father ?” 

She rose and stepped to the piano in the 
corner. It was a tall Collard, shaped, above the 
key-board, like a cupboard. After touching the 
notes softly, to be sure they were in tune, she 
drew over a chair, and fell to playing Schumann’s 
“Warum?” very tenderly. It was a tinkling 
instrument, but perhaps her playing gained 
pathos thereby, before such an audience. At 
the end she turned round: there were tears in 
her eyes. 

“You used to play the ‘ Osborne Quadrilles’ 
very nicely,’ observed Miss Susan, suddenly. 


»9 





“Your playing has become very—very 
“ Disreputable,” suggested Joanna. 
“Well, not exactly. I was going to say ‘un- 

intelligible.’ ” 

“It’s the same thing.” She rose, kissed her 
step-sisters, and walked out of the room without 

a look at Miss Bunce. 


“Poor Joanna!” observed Miss Susan, after 


THE RETURN OF JOANNA. 61 


a minute’s silence. “She has aged very much. 
I really must begin to think of my end.” 


Outside, in the street, Joanna’s husband was 
waiting for her—a dark, ragged man, with a 
five-act expression of face. 

“Don’t talk to me for a while,” she begged. 
“T have been among ghosts.” 

“Ghosts ?” 

“They were much too dull to be real: and 
yet—— Oh, Jack, I feel glad for the first time 
that our child was taken! I might have left 
him there.” 

“What shall we sing?” asked the man, 
turning his face away. 

“Something pious,” Joanna answered with 
an ugly little laugh, “since we want our dinner. 
The public has still enough honesty left to pity 
piety.” She stepped out into the middle of the 
street, facing her sisters’ windows, and began, 
the man’s voice chiming in at the third bar— 


“ In the sweet by-and-bye 
We shall meet on that be—yeautiful shore.” . . 


ae 
Fey SEN na" 
yg PER By 








PSYCHE 


“Among these million Suns how shall the 
strayed Soul find her way back to earth?” 


THE man was an engine-driver, thick-set and 
heavy, with a short beard grizzled at the edge, 
and eyes perpetually screwed up, because his life 
had run for the most part in the teeth of the 
wind. The lashes, too, had been scorched off. 
If you penetrated the mask of oil and coal-dust 
that was part of his working suit, you found a 
reddish-brown phlegmatic face, and guessed its 
age at fifty. He brought the last down train 
into Lewminster station every night at 9.45, took 
her on five minutes later, and passed through 
Lewminster again at noon, on his way back with 
the Galloper, as the porters called it. 

He had reached that point of skill at which 
a man knows every pound of metal in a loco- 
motive; seemed to feel just what was in his 
engine the moment he took hold of the levers 


64 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


and started up; and was expecting promotion. 
While waiting for it, he hit on the idea of study- 
ing a more delicate machine, and married a 
wife. She was the daughter of a woman at 
whose house he lodged, and her age was less 
than half of his own. It is to be supposed he 
loved her. 

A year after their marriage she fell into low 
health, and her husband took her off to Lew- 
minster for fresher air. She was lodging alone 
at Lewmuinster, and the man was passing Lew- 
minster station on his engine, twice a day, at the 
time when this tale begins. 


People—especially those who live in the 
West of England—remember the great fire at 
the Lewminster Theatre; how, in the second 
Act of the Colleen Bawn, a tongue of light shot 
from the wings over the actors’ heads ; how, even 
while the actors turned and ran, a sheet of fire 
swept out on the auditorium with a roaring 
wind, and the house was full of shrieks and 
blind death; how men and women were turned 
to a white ash as they rose from their seats, so 





PSYCHE. 65 


fiercely the flames outstripped the smoke. These 
things were reported in the papers, with narra- 
tives and ghastly details, and for a week all 
England talked of Lewminster. - 

This engine-driver, as the 9.45 train neared 
Lewminster, saw the red in the sky. And when 
he rushed into the station and drew up, he saw 
that the country porters who stood about were 
white as corpses. 

“ What fire is that?” he asked one. 

“Tis the theayter! There’s a hundred 
burnt a’ready, and the rest treadin’ each other’s 
lives out while we stand talkin’, to get pon the 
roof and pitch theirselves over!” 


Now the engine-driver’s wife was going to 
the play that night, and he knew it. She had 
met him at the station, and told him so, at mid- 
day. 

But there was nobody to take the train on, 
if he stepped off the engine; for his fireman was 
_ a young hand, and had been learning his trade 
for less than three weeks. 


So when the five minutes were up—or 
F 


66 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





rather, ten, for the porters were bewildered that 
night—this man went on out of the station into 
the night. Just beyond the station the theatre 
was plain to see, above the hill on his left, and 
the flames were leaping from the roof; and he 
knew that his wife was there. But the train was 
never taken down more steadily, nor did a single 
passenger guess what manner of man was driving 
it. 

At Drakeport, where his run ended, he 
stepped off the engine, walked from the railway- 
sheds to his mother-in-law’s, where he still 
lodged, and went up-stairs to his bed without 
alarming a soul. 

In the morning, at the usual hour, he was 
down at the station again, washed and cleanly 
dressed. His fireman had the Galloper’s engine 
polished, fired up, and ready to start. 

“Mornin’,” he nodded, and looking into his 
driver’s eyes, dropped the handful of dirty lint 
with which he had been polishing. After 
shuffling from foot to foot for a minute, he ended 
by climbing down on the far side of the engine. 

“Oldster,” he said, “’tis mutiny p’raps; but 


PSYCHE. 67 


shelp me, if I ride a mile ‘longside that new 
face o’ your’n !” 

“ Maybe you're right,” his superior answered 
wearily. “You'd best go up to the office, and 
get somebody sent down 7? my place. And 
while you're there, you might get me a third- 
class for Lewminster.” 

So this man travelled up to Lewminster as 
passenger, and found his young wife’s body 
among the two score stretched in a stable-yard 
behind the smoking theatre, waiting to be 
claimed. And the day after the funeral he left 
the railway company’s service. He had saved 
a bit, enough to rent a small cottage two miles 
from the cemetery where his wife lay. Here he 
settled and tilled a small garden beside the high- 
road. 


Nothing seemed to be wrong with the man 
until the late summer, when he stood before the 
Lewminster magistrates charged with a violent 
and curiously wanton assault. 

It appeared that one dim evening, late in 


August, a mild gentleman, with Leghorn hat, 
F2 


68 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


eee eee eee 


spectacles, and a green gauze net, came saunter- 
ing by the garden where the ex-engine-driver 
was pulling a basketful of scarlet runners: that 
the prisoner had suddenly dropped his beans, 
dashed out into the road, and catching the mild 
gentleman by the throat had wrenched the 
butterfly net from his hand and belaboured him 
with the handle till it broke. 

There was no defence, nor any attempt at 
explanation. The mild gentleman was a stranger 
to the neighbourhood. The magistrates mar- 
velled, and gave his assailant two months. 

At the end of that time the man came out of 
gaol and went quietly back to his cottage. 


Early in the following April he conceived a 
wish to build a small greenhouse at the foot of 
his garden, by the road, and spoke to the local 
mason about it. One Saturday afternoon the 
mason came over to look at the ground and dis- 
cuss plans. It was bright weather, and while 
the two men talked a white butterfly floated past 
them—the first of the year. 

Immediately the mason broke off his sen- 


PSYCHE. 69 





tence and began to chase the butterfly round 
the garden: for in the West country there is a 
superstition that if a body neglect to kill the 
first butterfly he may see for the season, he will 
have ill luck throughout the year. So he dashed 
across the beds, hat in hand. 

“Tll hat ’en—I'll hat ’en! No, fay! TU 
miss ’en, I b’lieve. Shan’t be able to kill’n if 
her’s wunce beyond th’ gaate—stiddy, my son! 
Wo-op !” 

Thus he yelled, waving his soft hat: and the 
next minute was lying stunned across a carrot- 
bed, with eight fingers gripping the back of his 
neck and two thumbs squeezing on his wind- 
pipe. 

There was another assault case heard by the 
Lewminster bench ; and this time the ex-engine- 
driver received four months. As _ before, he 
offered no defence: and again the magistrates 
were possessed with wonder. 


Now the explanation is quite simple. This 
man’s wits were sound, save on one point. He 
believed—why, God alone knows, who enabled 


70 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





him to drive that horrible journey without a 
tremor of the hand—that his wife’s soul haunted 
him in the form of a white butterfly or moth. 
The superstition that spirits take this shape is 
not unknown in the West; and I suppose that as 
he steered his train out of the station, this fancy, 
by some odd freak of memory, leaped into his 
brain, and held it, hour after hour, while he and 
his engine flew forward and the burning theatre 
fell further and further behind. The truth was 
known a fortnight after his return from prison, 
which happened about the time of barley 
harvest. 

A harvest-thanksgiving was held in the 
parish where he lived; and he went to it, 
being always a religious man. There were 
sheaves and baskets of vegetables in the 
chancel; fruit and flowers on the communion- 
table, with twenty-one tall candles burning 
above them; a processional hymn; and a long 
sermon. During the sermon, as the weather 
was hot and close, someone opened the door at 
the west, end. 

And when the preacher was just making up 


PSYCHE. 71 





his mind to close the discourse, a large white 
moth fluttered in at the west door. 

There was much light throughout the 
church; but the great blaze came, of course, 
from the twenty-one candles upon the altar. 
And towards this the moth slowly drifted, as 
if the candles sucked her nearer and nearer, up 
between the pillars of the nave, on a level with 
their capitals. Few of the congregation noticed 
her, for the sermon was a stirring one; only one 
or two children, perhaps, were interested—and 
the man I write of. He saw her pass over his 
head and float up into the chancel. He half- 
rose from his chair. 

“My brothers,” said the preacher, “if two 
sparrows, that are sold for a farthing, are 
not too little for the care of this infinite 


9 


Providence 





A scream rang out and drowned the sentence, 
It was followed by a torrent of vile words, 
shouted by a man who had seen, now for the 
second time, the form that clothed his wife’s 
soul shrivelled in unthinking flames. All that 
was left of the white moth lay on the altar-cleth, 


72 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


among the fruit at the base of the tallest candle- 
stick. 

And because the man saw nothing but 
cruelty in the Providence of which the preacher 
spoke, he screamed and cursed, till they over- 
powered him and took him forth by the door, 
He was wholly mad from that hour. 


THE COUNTESS OF BELLARMINE. 


Fw rivers in England are without their “ Lovers’ 
Leap”; but the tradition of this one is singular, 
I believe. It overhangs a dark pool, midway 
down a west country valley—a sheer escarp- 
ment of granite, its lip lying but a stone’s throw 
from the high-road, that here finds its descent 
broken by a stiff knoll, over which it rises and 
topples again like a wave. 

I had drawn two shining peel out of the pool, 
and sat eating my lunch on the edge of the 
Leap, with my back to the road. Forty feet 
beneath me the water lay black and glossy, 
behind the dotted foliage of a birch-tree. My 
rod stuck upright from the turf at my elbow, 
and, whenever I turned my head, neatly bi- 
sected the countenance and upper half of Seth 
Truscott, an indigenous gentleman of miscella- 
neous habits and a predatory past, who had 
followed me that morning to carry the landing- 
net. 


74 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


It was he who, after lunch, imparted the 
story of the rock on which we sat; and as it 
seemed at the time to gain somewhat by the 
telling, I will not risk defacing it by meddling 
with his dialect. 


“T reckon, sir,’ he began, with an upward 
nod at a belt of larches, the fringe of a great 
estate, that closed the view at the head of the 
vale, “you’m too young to mind th’ ould Earl 
o Bellarmine, that owned Castle Cannick, up 
yonder, in my growin’ days. ‘Ould Wounds’ 
he was nick-named—a cribbage-faced, what-the- 
blazes kind o’ varmint, wi’ a gossan wig an’ a 
tongue like oil o’ vitriol, He'd a-led the fore- 
half o’ his life, I b’lieve, in London church-town, 
by reason that he an’ his father couldn’ be left 
in a room together wiout comin’ to fisticuffs: 
an’ by all accounts was fashion’s favourite in the 
naughty city, doin’ his duty in that state o’ life 
an’ playing Hamlet’s ghost among the Ten 
Commandments. 

“The upshot was that he killed a young 
gentleman over a game o’ whist, an’ that was 


THE COUNTESS OF BELLARMINE. 75 


too much even for the Londoners. So he packed 
up and sailed for furrin’ parts, an’ didn’ show his 
face in England till th’ ould man, his father, was 
took wi a seizure an’ went dead, bein’ palsied 
down half his face, but workin’ away to the end 
at the most lift-your-hair wickedness wi the 
sound side of his mouth. 

“Then the new Earl turned up an’ settled at 
Castle Cannick. He was a wifeless man, an’, by 
the look o’t, had given up all wish to coax the 
female eye: for he dressed no better ’n a jockey, 
an’ all his diversion was to ride in to Tregarrick 
Market o’ Saturdays, an’ hang round the door- 
way o the Pack-Horse Inn, by A. Walters, and 
glower at the men an’ women passin’ up and 
down the Fore Street, an’ stand drinkin’ brandy 
an’ water while the horse-jockeys there my- 
lord’ed ’en. Two an’ twenty glasses, they say, 
was his quantum between noon an’ nine o’clock; 
an’ then he’d climb into saddle an’ ride home 
to his jewelled four-poster, cursin’ an’ mutterin’, 
but sittin’ his mare like a man of iron. 

“ But one o’ these fine market-days he did a 
thing that filled the mouths o’ the country-side, 


76 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“ He was loafin’ by the Pack-Horse door, just 
as usual, at two o'clock, rappin’ the head o’ his 
crop on the side o’ his ridin’ boots, drawin’ his 
brows down an’ lookin’ out curses from under 
-’em across the street to the saddler’s opposite, 
when two drover-chaps came up the pavement 
wi a woman atween ’em. 

“The woman—or maid, to call her by her 
proper title—was a dark-browed slut, wi’ eyes 
like sloes, an’ hair dragged over her face till she 
looked like an owl in an ivy-bush. As for the 
gown o’ her, ’twas no better ’n a sack tied round 
the middle, wi’ a brave piece torn away by the 
shoulder, where one o’ the men had clawed her. 

“There was a pretty dido goin’ on atween 
the dree, an’ all talkin’ together—the two men 
mobbin’ each other, an’ the girl Y the middle 
eallin’ em every name but what they was 
chrisened, wiout distinction o’ persons, as the 
word goes. 

“«What’s the uproar?’ asks Ould Wounds, 
stoppin’ the tap-tap o’ his crop, as they comes up. 

“<The woman b’longs to me,’ says the first. 
‘I've engaged to make her my lawful wife; an’ 


THE COUNTESS OF BELLARMINE. 77 


— 


I won’t go from my word under two gallon o’ 
fourpenny.’ 

“«You agreed to hand her over for one 
gallon, first along, says t’other, ‘an’ a bargain’s 
a bargain.’ 

“Says the woman, ‘You're a pair o’ hair- 
splitting shammicks, the pair of ’ee. An’ how 
much beer be I to have for my _ weddin’ 
portion?’ (says she)—‘for that’s all J care 
about, one way or t’other.’ 

“Now Ould Wounds looked at the woman; 
an’ ’tis to be thought he found her eyeable, for 
he axed up sharp— 

“* Would ’ee kick over these two, an’ marry 
me, for a bottle o’ gin ?’ 

“<That would I’ 

“*«An’ to be called My Lady—Countess 0’ 
Bellarmine ?’ 

“« Better an’ better.’ 

“<T shall whack ’ee.’ 

“«T don’t care.’ 

“«T shall kick an’ cuff an’ flog ’ee like a 
span’el dog, says he: ‘by my body! I shall make 
‘ee repent.’ 


78 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“< Give ’ee leave to try, says she. 

“ An’ that’s how th’ Earl o’ Bellarmine courted 
his wife. He took her into the bar an’ treated 
her to a bottle o gin on the spot. At nine 
o'clock that evenin’ she tuk hold of his stirrup- 
leather an’ walked beside ’en, afoot, up to 
Castle Cannick. Next day, their banns were 
axed in church, an’ in dree weeks she was My 
Ladyship. 

«’Twas a battle-royal that began then. Ould 
Wounds dressed the woman up to the nines, an’ 
forced all the bettermost folk 7 the county to 
pay their calls an’ treat her like one o’ the 
blood; and then, when the proud guests stepped 
into their chariots an’ druv away, he'd fall to, 
an’ lick her across the shoulders wi’ his ridin’- 
whip, to break her sperrit. “Twas the happiest 
while o’ th’ ould curmudgeon’s life, I do b'lieve; 
for he’d found summat he cudn’ tame in a hurry. 
There was a noble pond afore the house, 7’ those 
days, wi urns an’ heathen gods around the 
brim, an’ twice he dragged her through it in 
her night-gown, I’ve heerd, an’ always dined 
wi a pistol laid by his plate, alongside the 


THE COUNTESS OF BELLARMINE. 79 


knives an’ prongs, to scare her. But not 
she! 

“ An’ next he tried to burn her in her bed: 
an’ that wasn’ no good. 

“« An’ last of all he fell 7 te wi her: an’ 
that broke her. 


“One day—the tale goes—she made up her 
mind an’ ordered a shay an’ pair from the 
Pack-Horse. The postillion was to be waitin’ 
by the gate o’ the deer-park—the only gate that 
hadn’t a lodge to it—at ten o'clock that night. 
"Twas past nine afore dinner was done, an’ she 
got up from her end o’ the table an’ walked 
across to kiss th’ ould fellow. He, ’pon his 
side, smiled on her, pleased as Punch; for ’twas 
little more’n a fortni’t since he'd discovered 
she was the yapple of his eye. She said 
‘Good night’ an’ went up-stairs to pack a few 
things in a bag, he openin’ the door and 
shuttin’ it upon her. Then he outs wi’ his 
watch, waits a couple o’ minutes, an’ slips out 
o’ the house. 

“At five minutes to ten comes my ladyship, 


80 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





glidin’ over the short turf o’ the deer-park, an’ 
glancin’ over her shoulder at the light in his 
lordship’s libery window. ’Twas burnin’ in true 
watch-an’-fear-nothin’ style, an’ there, by the 
gate, was the shay and horses, and postillion, 
wrapped up and flapping his arms for warmth, 
who touched his cap and put down the steps 
for her. 

“<Drive through Tregarrick, says she, ‘an’ 
don’t spare whip-cord.’ 

“Slam went the door, up climbed the postil- 
lion, an’ away they went like a house afire. 
There was half-a-moon up an’ a hoar frost 
gatherin’, an’ my lady, leanin’ back on the 
cushions, could see the head and shoulders of 
the postillion bob-bobbing, till it seemed his 
head must work loose and tumble out of his 
collar. 

“The road they took, sir, is the same that 
runs down the valley afore our very eyes. An’ 
‘pon the brow o’t, just when it comes in sight, 
the off horse turned restive. In a minute ’twas 
as mouch as the post-boy could ha’ done to hold 
‘en, But he didn try. Instead, he fell to 


al aii —— 





THE COUNTESS OF BELLARMINE. 8) 


floggin’ harder, workin’ his arm up an’ down 
like a steam-engin’. 

“<«What the jiminy are ’ee doin?’ calls out 
her ladyship—or words to that effec—clutchin’ 
at the side o’ the shay, an’ tryin’ to stiddy hersel’, 

“<]T thought I wasn’ to spare whip-cord,’ calls 
back the post-boy. 

“ An’ with that he turned 7 the saddle; an’ 
*twas the face o’ her own wedded husband, as 
ghastly white as if ’t burned avready 7 the 
underground fires. 

“Seein’ it, her joints were loosed, an’ she sat 
back white as he; an’ down over the hill they 
swung at a breakneck gallop, shay lurchin’ and 
stones flyin’. 

“About thirty yards from where we’m sittin’, 
sir, Ould Wounds caught the near rein twice 
round his wrist an lean’t back, slowly pullin’ it, 
till his face was slewed round over his left 
shoulder an’ grinnin’ in my lady’s face. 

“An that was the last look that passed 
atween ’em. For now feeling the wheels on 
grass and the end near, he loosed the rein and 


fetched the horse he rode a cut atween the 
G 


82 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


ears—an’ that’s how ’twas,” concluded Seth, 
lamely. 

Like most inferior narrators, he shied at the 
big fence, flinched before the climax. But as he 
ended, I flung a short glance downward at the 
birches and black water, and took up my rod 
again with a shiver. 


FROM 
A COTTAGE IN TROY, 





I—A HAPPY VOYAGE. 


THE cottage that I have inhabited these six 
years looks down on the one quiet creek in a 
harbour full of business. The vessels that enter 
beneath Battery Point move up past the grey 
walls and green quay-doors of the port to the 
jetties where their cargoes lie. All day long I 
can see them faring up and down past the 
mouth of my creek; and all the year round I 
listen to the sounds of them—the dropping or 
lifting of anchors, the wh-h-ing! of a siren- 
whistle cutting the air like a twanged bow, the 
concertina that plays at night, the rush of the 
clay cargo shot from the jetty into the lading 
ship. But all this is too far remote to vex me. 
Only one vessel lies beneath my terrace; and 
she has lain there for a dozen years. After 
many voyages she was purchased by the Board 
of Guardians in our district, dismasted, and 
anchored up here to serve as a hospital-ship in 
case the cholera visited us. She has never had 


86 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


a sick man on board from that day to the 
present. But once upon a time three people 
spent a very happy night on her deck, as you 
shall hear. She is called The Gleaner. 

I think I was never so much annoyed in my 
life as on the day when Annie, my only servant, 
gave me a month’s “warning.” That was four 
years ago; and she gave up cooking for me to 
marry a young watchmaker down at the town— 
a youth of no mark save for a curious distortion 
of the left eyebrow (due to much gazing through 
a circular glass into the bowels of watches), a 
frantic assortment of religious convictions, a 
habit of playing the fiddle in hours of ease, and 
an absurd name—Tubal Cain Bonaday. I 
noticed that Annie softened it to “ Tubey.” 

Of course I tried to dissuade her, but my 
arguments were those of a wifeless man, and 
-very weak. She listened to them with much 
patience, and went off to buy her wedding-frock. 
She was a plain girl, without a scintilla of 
humour; and had just that sense of an omelet 
that is vouchsafed to one woman in a genera- 
tion. 





A HAPPY VOYAGE. 87 


So she and Tubal Cain were married at the 
end of the month, and disappeared on their 
honeymoon, no one quite knew whither. They 
went on the last day of April. 


At half-past eight in the evening of May 6th 
I had just finished my seventh miserable dinner. 
My windows were open to the evening, and the 
scent of the gorse-bushes below the terrace hung 
heavily underneath the verandah and stole into 
the room where I sat before the white cloth, in 
the lamp-light. I had taken a cigarette and was 
reaching for the match-box when I chanced to 
look up, and paused to marvel at a singular 
beauty in the atmosphere outside. 

It seemed a final atonement of sky and earth 
in one sheet of vivid blue. Of form I could see 
nothing ; the heavens, the waters of the creek 
below, the woods on the opposite shore were 
simply indistinguishable—blotted out in this 
one colour. If you can recall certain adver- 
tisements of Mr. Reckitt, and can imagine 
one of these transparent, with a soft light 
glowing behind it, you will be as near as | 


88 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


can help you to guessing the exact colour. And, 
but for a solitary star and the red lamp of a 
steamer lying off the creek’s mouth, this blue 
covered the whole firmament and face of the 
earth. 

I lit my cigarette and stepped out upon the 
verandah. In a minute or so a sound made me 
return, fetch a cap from the hall, and descend 
the terrace softly. 

My feet trod on bluebells and red-robins, and 
now and then crushed the fragrance out of a 
low-lying spike of gorse. I knew the flowers 
were there, though in this curious light I could 
only see them by peering closely. At the foot 
of the terrace I pulled up and leant over the 
oak fence that guarded the abrupt drop into the 
creek. 

There was a light just underneath. It came 
from the deck of the hospital-ship, and showed 
me two figures standing there—a woman lean- 
ing against the bulwarks, and a man beside her. 
The man had a fiddle under his chin, and was 
playing “ Annie Laurie,” rather slowly and with 
a deal of sweetness. 





A HAPPY VOYAGE. 89 





When the melody ceased, I craned still 
further over the oak fence and called down, 

“Tubal Cain !” 

The pair gave a start, and there was some 
whispering before the answer came up to me. 

“Ts that you, sir?” 

“To be sure,” said I. “What are you two 
about on board The Gleaner ?” 

Some more whispering followed, and then 
Tubal Cain spoke again— 

“Tt doesn’t matter now, sir. We've lived 
aboard here for a week, and to-night’s the end of 
our honeymooning. If ’tis no liberty sir, Annie’s 
wishful that you should join us.” 

Somehow, the invitation, coming through 
this mysterious atmosphere, seemed at once 
natural and happy. The fiddle began again as I 
stepped away from the fence and went down to 
get my boat out. In three minutes I was afloat, 
and a stroke or two brought me to the ship’s 
ladder. Annie and Tubal Cain stood at the 
top to welcome me. 


But if I had felt no incongruity in paying 


90 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





this respectful visit to my ex-cook and 
her lover, I own that her appearance made 
me stare. For, if you please, she was 
dressed out like a lady, in a gown of pale blue 
satin trimmed with swansdown—a low-necked 
gown, too, though she had flung a white shawl 
over her shoulders. Imagine this and the flood 
of blue light around us, and you will hardly 
wonder that, half-way up the ladder, I paused to 
take breath. Tubal Cain was dressed as usual, 
and tucking his fiddle under his arm, led me up 
to shake hands with his bride as if she were a 


queen. I cannot say if she blushed. Certainly 


she received me with dignity: and then, invert- 
ing a bucket that lay on the deck, seated 
herself; while Tubal Cain and I sat down on the 
deck facing her, with our backs against the 
bulwarks. 

“Tt’s just this, sir,” explained the bridegroom, 
laying his fiddle across his lap, and speaking as 
if in answer to a question: “it’s just this:—by 
trade you know me for a watchmaker, and for a 
Plymouth Brother by conviction. All the week 
['m bending over a counter, and every Sabbath- 


A HAPPY VOYAGE. 91 





day I speak in prayer-meeting what I hold, that 
life’s a dull pilgrimage to a better world. Ifyou 
ask me, sir, to-night, | ought to say the same. 
But a man may break out for once; and when 
so well as on his honeymoon? For a week I’ve 
been a free heathen: for a week I’ve been hiding 
here, living with the woman I love in the open 
air; and night after night for a week Annie here 
has clothed herself like a woman of fashion. Oh, 
my God! it has been a beautiful time—a happy 
beautiful time that ends to-night!” 

He set down the fiddle, crooked up a knee 
and clasped his hands round it, looking at Annie. 

“ Annie, girl, what is it that we believe till 
to-morrow morning? You believe—eh ?—that 
‘tis a rare world, full of delights, and with no 
ugliness in it ?” 

Annie nodded. 

“And you love every soul—the painted 
woman in the streets no less than your own 
mother ?” 

Annie nodded again. “Td nurse ’em both 
if they were sick,” she said. 

“One like the other ?” 


92 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“No difference.” 

“And there’s nothing shames you?” Here 
he rose and took her hand. “You wouldn’t 
blush to kiss me before master here ?” 

“Why should I?” She gave him a sober 
kiss, and let her hand rest in his. 

I looked at her. She was just as quiet as in 
the old days when she used to lay my table. It 
was like gazing at a play. 

I should be ashamed to repeat the nonsense 
that Tubal Cain thereupon began to talk; for it 
was mere midsummer madness. But I smoked 
four pipes contentedly while the sound of his 
voice continued, and am convinced that he never 
performed so well at prayer-meeting. Down at 
the town I heard the church-clock striking mid- 
night, and then one o'clock; and was only 
aroused when the youth started up and grasped 
his fiddle. 

“And now, sir, if you would consent to one 
thing, ’twould make us very happy. You can’t 
play the violin, worse luck; but you might take 
a step or two round the deck with Annie, if I 
strike up a waltz-tune for you to move to.” 


A HAPPY VOYAGE. 93 


It was ridiculous, but as he began to play I 
moved up to Annie, put my arm around her, 
and we began to glide round and round on the 
deck. Her face was turned away from mine, 
and looked over my shoulder; if our eyes had 
met, I am convinced I must have laughed or 
wept. It was half farce, half deadly earnest, and 
for me as near to hysterics as a sane man can 
go. Tubal Cain, that inspired young Ply- 
mouth Brother, was solemn as a judge. As for 
Annie, I would give a considerable amount, at 
this moment, to know what she thought of it. 
But she stepped very lightly and easily, and I 
am not sure I ever enjoyed a waltz so much. The 
blue light—that bewitching, intoxicating blue 
light—paled on us as we danced. The grey 
conquered it, and I felt that when we looked at 
each other the whole absurdity would strike us, 
and I should never be able to tace these lovers 
again without a furious blush. As the day crept 
on, I stole a glance at Tubal Cain. He was 
scraping away desperately—with his eyes shut. 
For us the dance had become weariness, but we 
went on and on. We were afraid to halt. 


94 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


Suddenly a string of the violin snapped. We 
stopped, and I saw Tubal Cain’s hand pointing 
eastward. A golden ripple came dancing down 
the creek, and, at the head of the combe beyond, 
the sun’s edge was mounting. 

“Morning!” said the bridegroom. 

“Tt’s all done,” said Annie, holding out a 
hand to me, without looking up. “And thank 
you, sir.” 

“We danced through the grey,” I answered ; 
and that was all I could find to say, as I stepped 
_ towards the ladder. 

Half an hour later as I looked out of window 
before getting into bed I saw in the sunlight a 
boat moving down the creek towards the town 
Tubal Cain was rowing, and Annie sat in the 
stern. She had changed her gown. 


They have been just an ordinary couple ever 
since, and attend their chapel regularly. Some- 
times Annie comes over to make me an omelet; 
and, as a matter of fact, she is now in the 
kitchen. But not a word has ever been spoken 
between us about her honeymoon. 


Il—_THESE-AN’-THATS WIFE 


In the matter of These-an’-That himself, public 
Opinion in Troy is divided. To the great 
majority he appears scandalously careless of 
his honour; while there are just six or seven 
who fight with a suspicion that there dwells 
something divine in the man. 

To reach the town from my cottage I have 
to cross the Passage Ferry, either in the smaller 
boat which Eli pulls single-handed, or (if a 
market-cart or donkey, or drove of cattle be 
waiting on the slip) I must hang about till 
Eli summons his boy to. help him with the 
horse-boat. Then the gangway is lowered, the 
beasts are driven on board, the passengers follow 
at a convenient distance, and the long sweeps 
take us slowly across the tide. It was on such 
a voyage, a few weeks after I settled in the 
neighbourhood, that I first met These-an’-That. 

I was leaning back against the chain, with 
my cap tilted forward to keep off the dazzle 


96 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


of the June sunshine on the water, and lazily 
watching Eli as he pushed his sweep. Sud- 
denly I grew aware that by frequent winks 
and jerks of the head he wished to direct my 
attention to a passenger on my right—a short, 
round man in black, with a basket of eggs on 
his arm. 

There was quite a remarkable dearth of 
feature on this passenger’s face, which was 
large, soft, and unhealthy in colour: but what 
surprised me was to see, as he blinked in the 
sunlight, a couple of big tears trickle down 
his cheeks and splash among the eggs in his 
basket. 

“There’s trouble agen, up at Kit’s,” re- 
marked Eli, finishing his stroke with a jerk, 
and speaking for the general benefit, though 
the words were particularly addressed to a 
drover opposite. 

“Ho?” said the drover: “that woman 
agen ?” 

The passengers, one and all, bent their eyes 
on the man in black, who smeared his face 
with his cuff, and began weeping afresh, silently. 


——— a eS 


THESE-AN’-THAT’S WIFE. 97 





“Beat en blue las’ night, an’ turned en to 
doors—the dirty trollop.” 

“Eli, don’t ’°ee——” put in the poor man, 
in a low, deprecating voice. 

“Tss, an’ no need to tell what for,” exclaimed 





a red-faced woman who stood by the drover, 
with two baskets of poultry at her feet. “She’s 
a low lot; a low trapesin’ baggage. If These- 
an’-That, there, wasn’ but a poor, ha’f-baked 
shammick, he’d ha’ killed that wife o’ his afore 
this.” 

“Naybours, I’d as lief you didn’t mention 
it,” appealed These-an’-That, huskily. 

“Tm afeard you’m o’ no account, These-an’- 
That: but sam-sodden, if I may say so,” the 
drover observed. 

“Put in wi’ the bread, an’ took out wi’ the 
cakes,” suggested Eli. 

“ Wife !—a pretty loitch, she an’ the whole 
kit, up there!” went on the market-woman. “If 
you durstn’t lay finger pon your wedded wife, 
These-an’-That, but let her an’ that long-legged 
gamekeeper turn’ee to doors, you must be no 


better ’‘n a worm,—that’s all I say.” 
H 


98 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES, 


I saw the man’s face twitch as she spoke 
of the gamekeeper. But he only answered in 
the same dull way. 

“Td as lief you didn’ mention it, friends — 
if ’tis all the same.” 


His real name was Tom Warne, as I learnt 
from Eli afterwards; and he lived at St. Kit’s, 
a small fruit-growing hamlet two miles up the 
river, where his misery was the scandal of the 
place. The very children knew it, and would 
follow him in a crowd sometimes,. pelting him 
with horrible taunts as he slouched along the 
road to the kitchen garden out of which he 
made his living. He never struck one; never 
even answered; but avoided the school-house 
as he would a plague; and if he saw the Parson 
coming would turn a mile out of his road. 

The Parson had called at the cottage a 
score of times at least: for the business was 
quite intolerable. Two evenings out of the six, 
the long-legged gamekeeper, who was just a big, 
drunken bully, would swagger easily into These- 
an’-That’s kitchen and sit himself down without 


THESE-AN’-THAT’S WIFE. 99 


so much as “by your feave.” “Good evenin’, 
gamekeeper,” the husband would say in his dull, 
nerveless voice. Mostly he only got a jeer in 
reply. The fellow would sit drinking These- 
an’-That’s cider and laughing with These-an’- 
That’s wife, until the pair, very likely, took too 
much, and the woman without any cause broke 
into a passion, flew at the little man, and drove 
him out of doors, with broomstick or talons, 
while the gamekeeper hammered on the table 
and roared at the sport. His employer was an 
absentee who hated the Parson, so the Parson 
groaned in vain over the scandal. 


Well, one Fair-day I crossed in Eli’s boat 
with the pair. The woman—a dark gipsy 
creature—was tricked out in violet and yellow, 
with a sham gold watch-chain and great alu- 
minium earrings: and the gamekeeper had 
driven her down in his spring-cart. As Eli 
pushed off, I saw a small boat coming down 
the river across our course. It was These-an’- 
That, pulling down with vegetables for the fair. 


I cannot say if the two saw him: but he glanced 
H2 


10¢ NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


up for a moment at the sound of their laughter, 
then bent his head and rowed past us a trifle 
more quickly. The distance was too great to 
let me see his face. 

I was the last to step ashore. As I waited 
for Eli to change my sixpence, he nodded after 
the couple, who by this time had reached the 
top of the landing-stage, arm in arm. 

“ A bad day’s work for her, I reckon.” 

It struck me at the moment as a moral 
reflection of Eli’s, and no more. Late in the 
afternoon, however, I was enlightened. 


In the midst of the Fair, about four o’clock, 
a din of horns, beaten kettles, and hideous yell- 
ing, broke out in Troy. I met the crowd in 
the main street, and for a moment felt afraid 
of it. They had seized the woman in the tap- 
room of the “Man-o’-War”—where the game- 
keeper was lying in a drunken sleep—and were 
hauling her along in a Ram Riding. There is 
nothing so cruel as a crowd, and I have seen 
nothing in my life like the face of These-an’- 
That’s wife. It was bleeding; it was framed in 


THESE-AN’-THAT’S WIFE. 101 


tangles of black, dishevelled hair; it was livid ; 
but, above all, it was possessed with an awful 
fear—a horror it turned a man white to look 
on. Now and then she bit and fought like a 
cat: but the men around held her tight, and 
mostly had to drag her, her feet trailing, and 
the horns and kettles dinning in her wake. 

There lay a rusty old ducking-cage among 
the lumber up at the town-hall; and some 
fellows had fetched this down, with the. poles 
and chain, and planted it on the edge of the 
Town Quay, between the American Shooting 
Gallery and the World-Renowned Swing Boats. 
To this they dragged her, and strapped her fast. 

There is no need to describe what followed. 
Even the virtuous women who stood and ap- 
plauded would like to forget it, perhaps. At 
the third souse, the rusty pivot of the ducking- 
pole broke, and the cage, with the woman in 
it, plunged under water. 

They dragged her ashore at the end of the 
pole in something less than a minute. They 
unstrapped and laid her gently down, and began 
to feel over her heart, to learn if it were still 


102 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





_ 


beating. And then the crowd parted, and 
These-an’-That came through it. His face wore 
no more expression than usual, but his lips were 
working in a queer way. 

He went up to his wife, took off his hat, and 
producing an old red handkerchief from the 
crown, wiped away some froth and green weed 
that hung about her mouth. Then he lifted her 
limp hand, and patting the back of it gently, 
turned on the crowd. His lips were still work- 
ing. It was evident he was trying to say some- 
thing. 

“Naybours,” the words came at last, in the 
old dull tone; “I'd as lief you hadn’ thought o’ 
this.” 

He paused for a moment, gulped down some- 
thing in his throat, and went on— 

“T wudn’ say you didn’ mean it for the best, 


L 
\" 
¥ 
i 


an’ thankin’ you kindly. But you didn’ know _ 


her. Roughness, if I may say, was never no 
good wi’ her. It must ha’ been very hard for 
her to die like this, axin your parden, for she 
wasn’ one to bear pain.” 

Another long pause. 


THESE-AN’-THAT’S WIFR. 103 





“No, she cudn’ bear pain. P’raps he might 
ha’ stood it better—though o’ course you acted 
for the best, an’ thankin’ you kindly. Id as lief 
take her home now, naybours, if ’tis all the same.” 

He lifted the body in his arms, and carried it 
pretty steadily down the quay steps to his 
market-boat, that was moored below. Two 
minutes later he had pushed off and was 
rowing it quietly homewards. 


There is no more to say, except that the 
woman recovered. She had fainted, I suppose, 
as they pulled her out. Anyhow, These-an’-That 
restored her to life—and she ran away the very 
next week with the gamekeeper. 


Mek thes,’ 


mi? 
it te i WA 





IlI.—*« DOUBLES” AND QUITS. 


HERE is a story from Troy, containing two 
ghosts and a moral. I found it, only last week, 
in front of a hump-backed cottage that the 
masons are pulling down to make room for the 
new Bank. Simon Hancock, the outgoing 
tenant, had fetched an empty cider-cask, and 
set it down on the opposite side of the road ; 
and from this Spartan seat watched the work 
of demolition for three days, without exhaustion 
and without emotion. In the interval between 
two avalanches of dusty masonry, he spoke to 
this effect :-— 


Once upon a time the cottage was inhabited 
by aman and his wife. The man was notice- 
able for the extreme length of his upper lip and 
gloom of his religious opinions. He had been 
a mate in the coasting trade, but settled down, 
soon after his marriage, and earned his living as 
one of the four pilots in the port. The woman 


106 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


—_ 


was unlovely, with a hard eye and a temper as 
stubborn as one of St. Nicholas’s horns. How 
she had picked up with a man was a mystery, 
until you looked at him. 

After six years of wedlock they quarrelled 
one day, about nothing at all: at least, Simon 
Hancock, though unable to state the exact 
cause of strife, felt himself ready to swear it was 
nothing more serious than the cooking of the 
day’s dinner. From that date, however, the 
pair lived in the house together and never 
spoke. The man happened to be of the home- 
keeping sort—possessed no friends and never 
put foot inside a public-house. Through the 
long evenings he would sit beside his own 
fender, with his wife facing him, and never a 
word flung across the space between them, only 
now and then a look of cold hate. The few that 
saw them thus said it was like looking on a pair 
of ugly statues. And this lasted for four 
years. 

Of course the matter came to their minister’s 
ears—he was a “Brianite”—and the minister 
spoke to them after prayer-mecting, one Wed- 


** DOUBLES” AND QUITS. 107 


nesday night, and called at the cottage early 
next morning, to reconcile them. He stayed 
fifteen minutes and came away, down the street, 
with a look on his face such as Moses might 
have worn on his way down from Mount Sinai, 
if only Moses had seen the devil there, instead 
of God. 


At the end of four years, the neighbours re- 
marked that for two days no smoke had issued 
from the chimney of this cottage, nor had any- 
one seen the front door opened. There grew a 
surmise that the quarrel had flared out at last, 
and the wedded pair were lying within, in their 
blood, The anticipated excitement of finding 
the bodies was qualified, however, by a very 
present sense of the manner in which the bodies 
had resented intrusion during life. It was not 
until sunset on the second day that the con- 
stable took heart to break in the door. 

There were no corpses. The kitchen was 
tidy, the hearth swept, and the house empty. 
On the table lay a folded note, addressed, in the 
man’s handwriting, to the minister. 


108 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“ Dear Friend wm Grace,” it began, “we have 


been married ten years, and neither has broken 
the other; wntil which happens, 4 must be hell 
between us. We see no way out but to part for 
ten years more, gong our paths without news of 


each other. When that tume’s wp, we promise — 


to meet here, by owr door, on the morning of 
the first Monday wm October month, and try 
again. And to this we set owr names.”—here 
the two names followed. 

They must have set out by night; for an ex: 
tinguished candle stood by the letter, with ink- 
pot and pen. Probably they had parted just 
outside the house, the one going inland up the 
hill, the other down the street towards the har- 
bour. Nothing more was heard of them. Their 
furniture went to pay the quarter’s rent due to 
the Squire, and the cottage, six months later, 
passed into the occupation of Simon Hancock, 


Wwaterman. 


At this point Simon shall take up the narra- 
tive :— 


“Td been tenant over there”—with a nod — 


* DOUBLES” AND QUITS. 109 


towards the ruin—“nine year an’ goin’ on for 
the tenth, when, on a Monday mornin’, about 
this time o’ year, I gets out o’ bed at five o’clock 
an’ down to the quay to have a look at my boat; 
for ’twas the fag-end of the Equinox, and ther’d 
been a “nation gale blowin’ all Sunday and all 
Sunday night, an’ I thought she might have 
broke loose from her moorin’s. 

“The street was dark as your hat and the 
wind comin’ up it like gas in a pipe, with a 
brave deal o’ rain. But down ’pon the quay 
day was breakin’—a sort of blind man’s holiday, 
but enough to see the boat by; and there she 
held all right. You know there’s two postes 
*pon the town-quay, and another slap opposite 
the door o’ the ‘Fifteen Balls’? Well, just 
as I turned back home-long, I see a man 
leanin’ against thicky post like as if he was 
thinkin’, wi’ his back to me and his front to the 
‘Fifteen Balls’ (that was shut, o’ course, at that 
hour). I must ha’ passed within a yard of en, 
an’ couldn’ figure it up how I’d a-missed seein’ 
en. Hows’ever, ‘Good-mornin’!’ I calls out, in 
my well-known hearty manner. But he didn’ 


110 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


ey 


speak nor turn. ‘Mornin’!’ I says again. ‘Can 
‘ee tell me what time ’tis? for my watch is 
stopped ’—which was a lie; but you must lie 
now and then, to be properly sociable. 

“Well, he didn’ answer; so I went on to say 
that the ‘Fifteen Balls’ wudn’ be open for 
another dree hour; and then I walked slap up 
to en, and says what the Wicked Man said to 
the black pig. ‘You’m a queer Christian, I 
says, ‘not to speak. What’s your name at all ? 
And let’s see your ugly face.’ 

“With that he turned his face; an’ by the 
man! I wished mysel’ further. “Iwas a great 
white face, all parboiled, like a woman’s hands 
on washin’ day. An’ there was bits o’ sticks 
an’ chips o’ sea-weed stuck in his whiskers, and 
a crust o’ salt 1’ the chinks of his mouth; an’ his 
eyes, too, glarin’ abroad from great rims o’ salt. 

“Off I sheered, not azackly runnin’, but 
walkin’ pretty much like a Torpointer; an’ 
sure ‘nough the fellow stood up straight and 
began to follow close behind me. I heard the 
water go squish-squash in his shoon, every step 
he took. By this, I was fairly leakin’ wi’ sweat. 


* DOUBLES” AND QUITS. 111 


After a bit, hows’ever, at the corner o’ Higman’s 
store, he dropped off; an’ lookin’ back after 
twenty yards more, I saw him standin’ there in 
the dismal grey light like a dog that can’t make 
up his mind whether to follow or no. For ’twas 
near day now, an’ his face plain at that distance. 
Fearin’ he’d come on again, I pulled hot foot the 
few steps between me an’ home. But when I 
came to the door, I went cold as a flounder. 

“The fellow had got there afore me. There 
he was, standin’ pon my door-step—wi the same 
gashly stare on his face, and his lips a lead-colour 
in the light. 

«The sweat boiled out o’ me now. I quavered 
like a leaf, and my hat rose ’pon my head. ‘For 
the Lord’s sake, stand o’ one side,’ I prayed en; 
‘do’ee now, that’s a dear!’ But he wudn’ budge; 
no, not though I said several holy words out of 
the Mornin’ Service. 

“<Drabbet it!’ says I, ‘let’s try the back 
door. Why didn’ I think ’pon that afore?’ And 
around I runs. 

“There ’pon the back door-step was a woman! 
—an’ pretty well as gashly as the man. She was 


112 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


=e 





just a’natomy of a woman, wi’ the lines of her ribs 
showin’ under the gown, an’ a hot red spot ’pon 
either cheek-bone, where the skin was stretched 
tight as adrum. She looked not to ha’ fed for 
a year; an’, if you please, she'd a needle and 
strip o’ calico in her hands, sewin’ away all the 
while her eyes were glarin’ down into mine. 

“But there was a trick I minded in the way 
she worked her mouth, an’ says I, ‘ Missus Pol- 
warne, your husband’s a-waitin’ for ’ee, round by 
the front door.’ 

“« Aw, is he indeed?’ she answers, holdin’ 
her needle for a moment—an’ her voice was all 
hollow, like as if she pumped it up from a fathom 
or two. ‘Then, if he knows what’s due to his 
wife, I'll trouble en to come round,’ she says; 
‘for this here’s the door J mean to go in by.’ 


But at this point Simon asserts very plaus- 
ibly that he swooned off; so it is not known 
how they settled it. 

[This story is true, as anyone who cares may assure himself by 


referring to Robert Hunt’s “ Drolls of the West of England,” 
p. 357.] ; 





IV.—THE BOY BY THE BEACH. 


THERE are in this small history some gaps that 
can never be filled up; but as much as I know 
[ will tell you. 


The cottage where Kit lived until he was 
five years old stands at the head of a little 
beach of white shingle, just inside the har- 
bour’s mouth, so that all day long Kit could 
see the merchant-ships trailing in from sea, and 
passing up to the little town, or dropping down 
to the music of the capstan-song, and the calls 
and the creaking, as their crews hauled up the 
sails. Some came and went under bare poles 
in the wake of panting tugs; but those that 
carried canvas pleased Kit more. For a narrow 
coombe wound up behind the cottage, and down 
this coombe came not only the brook that 
splashed by the garden gate, but a small breeze, 
always blowing, so that you might count on 


seeing the white sails take it, and curve out 
: ) 


114 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


majestically as soon as ever they came opposite 
the cottage, and hold it until under the lee 27f 
the Battery Point. 

Besides these delights, the cottage had a 
plantation of ash and hazel above it, that 
climbed straight to the smooth turf and the 
four guns of the Battery; and a garden with a 
tamarisk hedge, and a bed of white violets, the 
earliest for miles around, and a fuchsia tree 
three times as tall as Kit, and a pink climbing 
rose that looked in at Kit’s window and 
blossomed till late in November. Here the 
child lived alone with his mother. For there 
was a vagueness of popular opinion respecting 
Kit’s father ; while about his mother, unhappily, 
there was no vagueness at all) She was a hand- 
some, low-browed woman, with a loud ‘laugh, 
a defiant manner, and a dress of violent hues. 
Decent wives clutched their skirts in passing 
her: but, as a set-off, she was on excellent terms 
with every sea-captain and mate that put into 
the port. 

All these captains and mates knew Kit and 
made a pet of him: and indeed there was a 


6 eae 


=O 


THE BOY BY THE BEACH. 115 


curious charm in the great serious eyes and 
reddish curls of this child whom other children 
shunned. No one can tell if he felt his isolation ; 
but of course it drove him to return the men’s 
friendship, and to wear a man’s solemnity and 
habit of speech. The woman dressed him care- 
fully, in glaring colours, out of her means: and 
as for his manners, they would no doubt have 
become false and absurd, as time went and 
knowledge came; but at the age of four they 
were those of a prince. 

“My father was a ship’s captain, too,” he 
would tell a new acquaintance, “but he was 
drowned at sea—oh, a long while ago; years 
and years before I was born.” 

The beginning of this speech he had learned 
from his mother; and the misty antiquity of 
the loss his own childish imagination suggested. 
The captains, hearing it, would wink at each 
other, swallow down their grins, and gravely 
inform him of the sights he would see and the 
lands he would visit when the time came for 
him, too, to be a ship’s captain. Often and 


often I have seen him perched, with his small 
12 


116 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


legs dangling, on one of the green posts on the 
quay, and drinking in their talk of green ice- 
‘ bergs, and flaming parrots, and pig-tailed China- 
men; of coral reefs of all marvellous colours, 
and suns that burnt men black, and monkeys 
that hung by their tails to the branches and 
pelted the passers-by with coco-nuts; and the 
rest of it. And the child would go back to the 
cottage in a waking dream, treading bright 
clouds of fancy, with perhaps a little carved 
box or knick-knack in his hand, the gift of 


some bearded, tender-hearted ruffan. It was — 


pitiful. 

Of course he picked up their talk, and very 
soon could swear with equal and appalling free- 
dom in English, French, Swedish, German, and 
Italian. But the words were words to him and 
more, as he had no morals. Nice distinctions 
between good and evil never entered the little 
room where he slept to the sound only of the 
waves that curved round Battery Point and 
tumbled on the beach below. And I know 
that, one summer evening, when the scandalised 
townsmen and their wedded wives assembled, 


THE BOY BY THE BEACH. ligt 


—_—— 


and marched down to the cottage with intent 
to lead the woman in a “ Ramriding,” the sight 
of Kit playing in the garden, and his look of 
innocent delight as he ran in to call his mother 
out, took the courage out of them and sent 
them home, up the hill, like sheep. 

Of course the truth must have come to him 
soon. But it never did: for when he was just 
five, the woman took a chill and died in a week. 

She had left a little money; and the Vicar, 
rather than let Kit go to the workhouse, spent it 
to buy the child admission to an Orphanage in 
the Midlands, a hundred miles away. 

So Kit hung the rose-tree with little scraps 
of crape, and was put, dazed and white, into a 
train and whisked a hundred miles off. And 
everybody forgot him. 


Kit spent two years at the Orphanage in an 
antique, preposterous suit—snuff-coloured coat 
with lappels, canary waistcoat, and corduroy 
small-clothes. And they gave him his meals 
regularly. There were ninety-nine other boys 
who all throve on the food: but Kit pined. 


118 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


And the ninety-nine, being full of food, made a 
racket at times; but Kit found it quiet—deathly 
quiet; and his eyes wore a listening look. 

For the truth was, he missed the noise of 
the beach, and was listening for it. And deep 
down in his small heart the sea was piping and 
calling to him. And the world had grown 
dumb; and he yearned always: until they had 
to get him a new canary waistcoat, for the old 
one had grown too big. 

At night, from his dormitory window, he 
could see a rosy light in the sky. At first he 
thought this must be a pillar of fire put there 
to guide him home; but it was only the glare 
of furnaces in a manufacturing town, not fat 
away. When he found this out his heart came 
near to break; and afterwards he pined still 
faster. 


One evening a lecture was given in the 
dining-room of the Orphanage. The subject 
was “The Holy Land,” and the lecturer ilus- 
trated it with views from the magic-lantern. 

Kit, who sat in one of the back rows, was 


THE BOY BY THE BEACH. 119 


moderately excited at first. But the views of 
barren hills, and sands, and ruins, and palm- 
trees, and cedars, wearied him after a while. 
He had closed his eyes, and the lecturer’s voice 
became a sing-song in which his heart searched, 
as it always searched, for the music of the 
beach; when, by way of variety—for it had 
little to do with the subject—the lecturer 
slipped in a slide that was supposed to depict 
an incident on the homeward voyage—a squall 
in the Mediterranean. 

It was a stirring picture, with an inky sky, 
and the squall bursting from it, and driving a 
small ship heeling over white crested waves. 
Of course the boys drew their breath. 

And then something like a strangling sob 
broke out on the stillness, frightening the 
lecturer; and a shrill cry— 

“Don’t go—oh, damn iw all! don’t go! 
Take me—take me home!” 

And there at the back of the room a small 
boy stood up on his form, and stretched out 
both hands to the painted ship, and shrieked 
and panted. 


120 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


There was a blank silence, and then the 
matron hurried up, took him firmly in her arms, 
and carried him out. 

“Don’t go—oh, for the Lord A’mighty’s sake, 
don’t go!” 

And as he was borne down the passages his 
ery sounded among the audience like the wail 
of a little lost soul. 

The matron carried Kit to the sick-room and 
put him to bed. After quieting the child a bit 
she left him, taking away the candle. Now the 
sick-room was on the ground floor, and Kit lay 
still a very short while. Then he got out of 
bed, groped for his clothes, managed to dress 
himself, and, opening the window, escaped on to 
the quiet lawn. Then he turned his face south- 
west, towards home and the sea—and ran. 

) How could he tell where they lay? God 

knows. Ask the swallow how she can tell, when 
in autumn the warm south is a fire in her brain. 
I believe that the sea’s breath was in the face 
of this child of seven, and its scent in his 
nostrils, and its voice in his ears, calling, sum- 
moning all the way. I only know that he ran 


THE BOY BY THE BEACH. 121 





——. 


straight towards his home, a hundred miles off, 
and that.next morning they found his. canary 
waistcoat and snuff-coloured coat in a ditch, 
two miles from the Orphanage, due south-west. 


Of his adventures on the road the story is 
equally silent, as I warned you. But the small 
figure comes into view again, a week later, on 
the hillside of the coombe above his home. 
And when he saw the sea and the white beach 
glittering beneath him, he did not stop, even for 
a moment, but reeled down the hill. The child 
was just a living skeleton; he had neither hat, 
coat, nor waistcoat; one foot only was shod, the 
other had worn through the stocking, and ugly 
red blisters showed on the sole as he ran. His 
face was far whiter than his shirt, save for a blue 
welt or two and some ugly red scratches; and 
his gaunt eyes were full of hunger and yearning, 
and his lips happily babbling the curses that the 
ships’ captains had taught him. 

He reeled down the hill to the cottage. The 
tenant was a newcomer to the town, and had 
lately been appointed musketry-instructor to 


122 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


the battery above. He was in the garden prun- 
ing the rose-tree, but did not particularly notice 
the boy. And the boy passed without turning 
his head. 

The tide on the beach was far out and just 
beginning to flow. There was the same dull 
plash on the pebbles, the same twinkle as the 
sun struck across the ripples. The sun was 
sinking; in ten minutes it would be behind the 
hill. 

No one knows what the waves said to Kit. © 
But he flung himself among them with a chok- 
ing cry, and drank the brine and tossed it over 
his head, and shoulders and chest, and lay down 
and let the small waves play over him, and cried 
and laughed aloud till the sun went down. 

Then he clambered on to a rock, some way — 
above them, and lay down to watch the water — 
rise; and watching it, fell asleep; and sleeping, 
had his wish, and went out to the wide seas. 


OLD ASON. 


JUDGE between me and my guest, the stranger 
within my gates, the man whom in his ex- 
tremity I clothed and fed. 


I remember well the time of his coming, for 
it happened at the end of five days and nights 
during which the year passed from strength 
to age; in the interval between the swallow’s 
departure and the redwing’s coming; when the 
tortoise in my garden crept into his winter 
quarters, and the equinox was on us, with an 
east wind that parched the blood in the trees, so 
that their leaves for once knew no gradations 
of red and yellow, but turned at a stroke to 
brown, and crackled like tin-foil. 

At five o’clock in the morning of the sixth 
day I looked out. The wind still whistled 
across the sky, but now without the obstruction 
of any cloud. Full in front of my window 
Sirius flashed with a whiteness that pierced the 


124 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


eye. A little to the right, the whole constella- 
tion of Orion was suspended clear over a wedge- 
like gap in the coast, wherein the sea could be 
guessed rather than seen. And, travelling yet 
further, the eye fell on two brilliant lights, the 
one set high above the other—the one steady 
and a fiery red, the other yellow and blazing 
intermittently—the one Aldebaran, the other 
revolving on the lighthouse top, fifteen miles 
away. 

Half-way up the east, the moon, now in her 
last quarter and decrepit, climbed with the 
dawn close at her heels. And at this hour they 
brought in the Stranger, asking if my pleasure 
were to give him clothing and hospitality. 


Nobody knew whence he came—except that 
it was from the wind and the night—seeing that 
he spoke in a strange tongue, moaning and 
making a sound like the twittering of birds in a 
chimney. But his journey must have been long 
and painful; for his legs bent under him, and 
he could not stand when they lifted him. So, 
finding it useless to question him for the tima 





OLD SON. 125 


I learnt from the servants all they had to tell 
—namely, that they had come upon him, but 
a few minutes before, lying on his face within 
my grounds, without staff or scrip, bareheaded, 
spent, and crying feebly for succour in his 
foreign tongue; and that in pity they had 
carried him in and brought him to me. 

Now for the look of this man, he seemed 
a century old, being bald, extremely wrinkled, 
with wide hollows where the teeth should be, 
and the flesh hanging loose and flaccid on his 
cheek-bones ; and what colour he had could 
have come only from exposure to that bitter 
night. But his eyes chiefly spoke of his ex- 
treme age. They were blue and deep, and filled 
with the wisdom of years; and when he turned 
them in my direction they appeared to look 
through me, beyond me, and back upon cen- 
turies of sorrow and the slow endurance of 
man, as if his immediate misfortune were but 
an inconsiderable item in a long list. They 
frightened me. Perhaps they conveyed a 
warning of that which I was to endure at 
their owners hands. From compassion, I 


126 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


ordered the servants to take him to my wife, 
with word that I wished her to set food before 
him, and see that it passed his lips. 

So much I did for this Stranger. Now learn 
how he rewarded me. 


He has taken my youth from me, and the 
most of my substance, and the love of my 
wile. 

From the hour when he tasted food in my 
house, he sat there without hint of going. 
Whether from design, or because age and his 
sufferings had really palsied him, he came back 
tediously to life and warmth, nor for many days 
professed himself able to stand erect. Mean- 
while he lived on the best of our hospitality. 
My wife tended him, and my servants ran at his 
bidding; for he managed early to make them 
understand scraps of his language, though slow 
in acquiring ours—I believe out of calculation, 
lest someone should inquire his business (which 
was a mystery) or hint at his departure. I 
myself often visited the room he had appro- 
priated, and would sit for an hour watching 





OLD ASON. 127 


those fathomless eyes while I tried to make 
head or tail of his discourse. When we were 
alone, my wife and I used to speculate at times 
on his probable profession. Was he a merchant? 
—an aged mariner?—a tinker, tailor, beggarman, 
thief? We could never decide, and he never 
disclosed. 

Then the awakening came. I sat one day in 
the chair beside his, wondering as usual. I had 
felt heavy of late, with a soreness and languor in 
my bones, as if a dead weight hung continually 
on my shoulders, and another rested on my 
heart. A warmer colour in the Stranger’s cheek 
caught my attention; and I bent forward, peer- 
ing under the pendulous lids. His eyes were 
livelier and less profound. The melancholy was 
passing from them as breath fades off a pane of 
glass. He was growing younger. Starting up 
I ran across the room, to the murror. 

There were two white hairs in my fore-lock ; 
and, at the corner of either eye, half a dozen 
radiating lines. I was an old man. 

Turning, I regarded the Stranger. He sat 
phlegmatic as an Indian idol; and in my fancy 


128 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


I felt the young blood draining from my own 
heart, and saw it mantling in his cheeks. 
Minute by minute I watched the slow miracle— 
the old man beautified. As buds unfold, he put 
on a lovely youthfulness; and, drop by drop, left 
me winter. 

I hurried from the room, and seeking my 
wife, laid the case before her. “This is a ghoul,” 
I said, “ that we harbour: he is sucking my best 
blood, and the household is clean bewitched.” 
She laid aside the book in which she read, and 
laughed at me. Now my wife was well-looking, 
and her eyes were the light of my soul. Con- 
sider, then, how I felt as she laughed, taking the 
Stranger’s part against me. When I left her, 
it was with a new suspicion in my heart. “How 
shall it be,” I thought, “if after stealing my 
youth, he go on to take the one thing that is 
better ?” 

In my room, day by day, I brooded upon 
this—hating my own alteration, and fearing 
worse. With the Stranger there was no longer 
any disguise. His head blossomed in curls; 
white teeth filled the hollows of his mouth; the 


OLD dSON. 129 


pits in his cheeks were heaped full with roses, 
glowing under a transparent skin. It was Aison 
renewed and thankless; and he sat on, devour- 
ing my substance. 

Now having probed my weakness, and being 
satisfied that I no longer dared to turn him out, 
he, who had half-imposed his native tongue upon 
us, constraining the household to a hideous 
jargon, the bastard growth of two languages, 
condescended to jerk us back rudely into our 
own speech once more, mastering it with a 
readiness that proved his former dissimulation, 
and using it henceforward as the sole vehicle of 
his wishes. On his past life he remained silent ; 
but took occasion to confide in me that he pro- 
posed embracing a military career, as soon as he 
should tire of the shelter of my roof. 

And I groaned in my chamber; for that 
which I feared had come to pass. He was 
making open love to my wife. And the eyes 
with which he looked at her, and the lips with 
which he coaxed her, had been mine; and I was 
an old man. Judge now between me and this 


guest. 
J 


130 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


One morning I went to my wife; for the 
burden was past bearing, and I must satisfy 
myself. I found her tending the plants on her 
window-ledge; and when she turned, | saw that 
years had not taken from her comeliness one jot. 
And I was old. 

So I taxed her on the matter of this 
Stranger, saying this and that, and how I had 
cause to believe he loved her. 

“That is beyond doubt,” she answered, and 
smiled. 

“By my head, I believe his fancy is re- 
turned!” I blurted out. 

And her smile grew radiant, as, looking me 
in the face, she answered, “By my soul, hus- 
band, it is.” 

Then I went from her, down into my garden, 
where the day grew hot and the flowers were 
beginning to droop. I stared upon them and 
could find no solution to the problem that 
worked in my heart. And then I glanced up, 
eastward, to the sun above the privet-hedge, and 
saw hvm coming across the flower beds, treading 
them down in wantonness. He came with a 


OLD SON. 131 


‘ight step and a smile, and I waited for him, 
leaning heavily on my stick. 

“Give me your watch!” he called out, as he © 
drew near. 

“Why should I give you my watch?” I 
asked, while something worked in my throat. 

“Because I wish it; because it is gold; 
because you are too old, and won’t want it much 
longer.” 

“Take it,” I cried, pulling the watch out and 
thrusting it into his hand. “Take it—you who 
have taken all that is better! Strip me, spoil 


” 


me 





A soft laugh sounded above, an! I turned. 
My wife was looking down on us from the 
window, and her eyes were both moist and glad. 

“Pardon me,” she said, “it is you who are 
spoiling the child.” 


doa 











y WAY al eT tae eS 
FAD ap A Lifer ly gay 











—, : “Oona 





o 


OF BLEAKIRK. 


STORIES 








L—THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRK-ON- 
SANDS. 


[The events, which took place on November 28, 
186-, are narrated by Reuben Cartwright, 
Esq., of Bleakirk Hall, Bleakirk-on-Sands, 
an the North Riding of Yorkshire] 

A RrouGH, unfrequented bridle-road rising and 

dipping towards the coast, with here and there 

a glimpse of sea beyond the sad-coloured moors: 

straight overhead, a red and wintry sun just 

struggling to assert itself: to right and left, a 

stretch of barren down still coated white with 

hoar-frost. 

I had flung the reins upon my horse’s neck, 
and was ambling homewards. Between me and 
Bleakirk lay seven good miles, and we had 
come far enough already on the chance of the 
sun’s breaking through; but as the morning 
wore on, so our prospect of hunting that day 
faded further from us. It was now high noon, 
and I had left the hunt half an hour ago, 


136 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


turned my face towards the coast, and lit a 
cigar to beguile the way. When a man is 
twenty-seven he begins to miss the fun of 
shivering beside a frozen cover. 

The road took a sudden plunge among the 
spurs of two converging hills. As I began to 
descend, the first gleam of sunshine burst from 
the dull heaven and played over the hoar-frost. 
I looked up, and saw, on the slope of the hill 
to the right, a horseman also descending. 

At first glance I took him for a brother 
sportsman who, too, had abandoned hope of 
a fox. But the second assured me of my 
mistake. The stranger wore a black suit of 
antique, clerical cut, a shovel hat, and gaiters; 
his nag was the sorriest of ponies, with a 
shaggy coat of flaring yellow, and so low in 
the legs that the broad flaps of its rider’s coat 
all but trailed on the ground. A queerer turn- 
out I shall never see again, though I live to be 
a hundred. 

He appeared not to notice me, but pricked 
leisurably down the slope, and I soon saw that, 
as our paths ran and at the pace we were going, 


EO 


THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRK-ON-SANDS. 137 


we should meet at the foot of the descent: 
which we presently did. 

“ Ah, indeed!” said the stranger, reining in 
his pony as though now for the first time aware 
of me: “I wish you a very good day, sir. We 
are well met.” 

He pulled off his hat with a fantastic 
politeness. For me, my astonishment grew as I 
regarded him more closely. A mass of lanky, 
white hair drooped on either side of a face 
pale, pinched, and extraordinarily wrinkled; 
the clothes that wrapped his diminutive body 
were threadbare, greasy, and patched in all 
directions. Fifty years’ wear could not have 
worsened them; and, indeed, from the whole 
aspect of the man, you might guess him a 
century old, were it not for the nimbleness of 
his gestures and his eyes, which were grey, 
alert, and keen as needles. 

I acknowledged his salutation as he ranged 
up beside me. 

“Will my company, sir, offend you? By 
your coat I suspect your trade: venatorem 
sapit—hey ?” 


138 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


His voice exactly fitted his eyes. Both © 
were sharp and charged with expression; yet 
both carried also a hint that their owner had 
lived long in privacy. Somehow they lacked 
touch. 

“T am riding homewards,” I answered. 

“Hey? Where is that?” 

The familiarity lay rather in the words than 
the manner; and I did not resent it. 

“ At Bleakirk.” 

His eyes had wandered for a moment to the 
road ahead; but now he turned abruptly, and 
looked at me, as I thought, with some suspicion. 
He seemed about to speak, but restrained him- 
self, fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and pro- 
ducing a massive snuff-box, offered me a pinch. 
On my declining, he helped himself copiously ; 
and then, letting the reins hang loose upon his 
arm, fell to tapping the box. 

“To me this form of the herb nicotiana 
commends itself by its cheapness: the sense is 
tickled, the purse consenting—like the com- 
plaisant husband in Juvenal: you take me? 
I am well acquainted with Bleakirk-swper- 





THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRK-ON-SANDS. 139 


sabulum. By the way, how is Squire Cart. 
wright of the Hall ?” 

“Tf” said I, “you mean my father, Angus 
Cartwright, he is dead these twelve years.” 

“Hey?” cried the old gentleman, and added 
after a moment, “ Ah, to be sure, time flies— 
quo dives Tullus et—Angus, eh? And yet a 
hearty man, to all seeming. So you are his 
son.” He took another pinch. “It is very 
sustaining,” he said. 

“The snuff?” 

“You have construed me, sir. Since I set 
out, just thirteen hours since, it has been my 
sole viaticum.” As he spoke he put his hand 
nervously to his forehead, and withdrew it. 

“Then,” thought I, “you must have started 
in the middle of the night,” for it was now little 
past noon. But looking at his face, I saw 
clearly that it was drawn and pinched with 
fasting. Whereupon I remembered my flask 
and sandwich-box, and pulling them out, as- 
sured him, with some apology for the offer, 
that they were at his service. His joy was 
childish. Again he whipped off his hat, and 


140 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


clapping it to his heart, swore my conduct did 
honour to my dead father; “and with Angus 
Cartwright,” said he, “kindness was intuitive. 
Being a habit, it outran reflection; and his 
whisky, sir, was undeniable. Come, I have a 
fancy. Let us dismount, and, in heroic fashion, 
spread our feast upon the turf; or, if the hoar- 
frost deter you, see, here are boulders, and 
a running brook to dilute our cups; and, by 
my life, a foot-bridge, to the rail of which we 
may tether our steeds.” 

Indeed, we had come to a hollow in the 
road, across which a tiny beck, now swollen 
with the rains, was chattering bravely. Falling 
in with my companion’s humour, I dismounted, 
and, after his example, hitched my mare’s rein 
over the rail. There was a raciness about the 


a 


adventure that took my fancy. We chose two — 


boulders from a heap of lesser stones close beside — 
the beck, and divided the sandwiches, for though — 


I protested I was not hungry, the old gentleman : 


insisted on our sharing alike. And now, as 
the liquor warmed his heart and the sunshine 
smote upon his back, his eyes sparkled, and 


THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRK-ON-SANDS. 141 


he launched on a flood of the gayest talk— 
yet always of a world that I felt was before 
my time. Indeed, as he rattled on, the feeling 
that this must be some Rip Van Winkle re- 
stored from a thirty years’ sleep grew stronger 
and stronger upon me. He spoke of Bleakirk, 
and displayed a knowledge of it sufficiently 
thorough—intimate even—yet of the old friends 
for whom he inquired many names were un- 
known to me, many familiar only through their 
epitaphs in the windy cemetery above the cliff. 
Of the rest, the pretty girls he named were now 
grandmothers, the young men long since bent 
and rheumatic; the youngest well over fifty. 
This, however, seemed to depress him little. 
His eyes would sadden for a moment, then 
laugh again. “ Well, well,” he said, “wrinkles, 
bald heads, and the deafness of the tomb—we 
have our day notwithstanding. Pluck the 
bloom of it—hey? a commonplace of the 
poets.” 

“But, sir,” I put in as politely as I might, 
“you have not yet told me with whom I have 
the pleasure of lunching.” 


142 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“Gently, young sir.” He waved his hand — 


towards the encircling moors. “ We have feasted 
more Homerico, and in Homer, you remember 
the host allowed his guest fourteen days before 
asking that question. Permit me to delay the 
answer only till I have poured libation on the 
turf here. Ah! I perceive the whisky is ex- 
hausted : but water shall suffice. May I trouble 
you—my joints are stiff—to fill your drinking- 
cup from the brook at your feet ?” 

I took the cup from his hands and stooped 
over the water. As I did so, he leapt on me like 
a cat from behind. I felt a hideous blow on the 
nape of the neck: a jagged flame leapt up: the 
sunshine turned to blood—then to darkness. 
With hands spread out, I stumbled blindly 
forward and fell at full length into the beck. 


When my senses returned, I became aware, 
first that I was lying, bound hand and foot and 
securely gagged, upon the turf; secondly, that 
the horses were still tethered, and standing 
quietly at the foot-bridge; and, thirdly, that 
my companion had resumed his position on 


THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRK-ON-SANDS. 143 


the boulder, and there sat watching my re- 
covery. 

Seeing my eyes open, he raised his hat and 
addressed me in tones of grave punctilio. 

“Believe me, sir, I am earnest in my regret 
for this state of things. Nothing but the 
severest necessity could have persuaded me to 
knock the son of my late esteemed friend over 
the skull and gag his utterance with a stone— 
to pass over the fact that it fairly lays my sense 
of your hospitality under suspicion, Upon my 
word, sir, it places me in a cursedly equivocal 
position !” 

He took a pinch of snuff, absorbed it slowly, 
and pursued. 

“Tt was necessary, however. You will partly 
grasp the situation when I tell you that my 
name is Teague—the Reverend William Teague, 
Doctor of Divinity, and formerly incumbent of 
Bleakirk-on-Sands.” 

His words explained much, though not every- 
thing. The circumstances which led to the 
Reverend William’s departure from Bleakirk had 
happened some two years before my birth: but 


144 NOUGATS AND CROSSES. 


they were startling enough to supply talk in 
that dull fishing village for many a long day. 
In my nursery I had heard the tale that my 
companion’s name recalled: and if till now I 
had felt humiliation, henceforth I felt absolute 
fear, for I knew that I had to deal with a 
madman. 

“T perceive by your eyes, sir,” he went on, 
“that with a part of my story you are already 
familiar: the rest I am about to tell you. It 
will be within your knowledge that late on a 
Sunday night, just twenty-nine years ago, my 
wife left the Vicarage-house, Bleakirk, and never 
returned ; that subsequent inquiry yielded no 
trace of her flight, beyond the fact that she went 
provided with a small hand-bag containing a 
change of clothing; that, as we had lived to- 
gether for twenty years in the entirest harmony, 
no reason could then, or afterwards, be given for 
her astonishing conduct. Moreover, you will 
be aware that its effect upon me was tragical ; 
that my lively emotions underneath the shock 
deepened into a settled gloom; that my faculties 
(notoriously eminent) in a short time became 








THH AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRE-ON-SANDS. 145 


clouded, nay, eclipsed—necessitating my _ re- 
moval (I will not refine) to a madhouse. Hey, 
is it not so?” 

I nodded assent as well as I could. He 
paused, with a pinch between finger and thumb, 
to nod back to me. Though his eyes were now 
blazing with madness, his demeanour was for- 
mally, even affectedly, polite. 

“My wife never came back: naturally, sir— 
for she was dead.” 

He shifted a little on the boulders, slipped the 
snuff-box back into his waistcoat pocket, then 
crossing his legs and clasping his hands over one 
knee, bent forward and regarded me fixedly. 

“Y murdered her,” he said slowly, and 
nodded. 

A pause followed that seemed to last an 
hour. The stone which he had strapped in 
my mouth with his bandanna was giving me 
acute pain ; it obstructed, too, what little breath- 
ing my emotion left me; and I dared not take 
my eyes off his. The strain on my nerves grew 
so tense that I felt myself fainting when his 


voice recalled me. 
K 


146 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“JT wonder now,” he asked, as if it were a | 
riddle—“*I wonder if you can guess why the 
body was never found ?” 

Again there was an intolerable silence before 
he went on. 

“Lydia was a dear creature : in many respects 
she made me an admirable wife. Her affection 
for me was canine—positively. But she was fat, 
sir; her face a jelly, her shoulders mountainous. 
Moreover, her voice !—it was my cruciation— 
monotonously, regularly, desperately voluble. If 
she talked of archangels, they became insig- 
nificant—and her themes, in ordinary, were of 
the pettiest. Her waist, sir, and my arm had 
once been commensurate: now not three of 
Homer’s heroes could embrace her. Her voice 
could once touch my heart-strings into music; it 
brayed them now, between the millstones of the 
commonplace. Figure to yourself a man of my 
sensibility condemned to live on these terms!” 

He paused, tightened his grasp on his knees — 
and pursued. t) 

“You remember, sir, the story of the baker 
in Langius? He narrates that a certain woman 





THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRE-ON-SANDS. 147 


conceived a violent desire to bite the naked 
shoulders of a baker who used to pass under- 
neath her window with his wares. So impera- 
tive did this longing become, that at length the 
woman appealed to her husband, who (being a 
good-natured man, and unwilling to disoblige 
her) hired the baker, for a certain price, to come 
and be bitten. The man allowed her two bites, 
but denied a third, being unable to contain him- 
self for pain. The author goes on to relate that, 
for want of this third bite, she bore one dead 
child, and two living. My own case,” continued 
the Reverend William, “was somewhat similar. 
Lydia’s unrelieved babble reacted upon her 
bulk, and awoke in me an absorbing, fascinating 
desire to strike her. I longed to see her quiver. 
I fought against the feeling, stifled it, trod it 
down: it awoke again. It filled my thoughts, 
my dreams; it gnawed me like a vulture. A 
hundred times while she sat complacently turn- 
ing her inane periods, I had to hug my fist to 
my breast, lest it should leap out and strike her 
senseless. Do I weary you? Let me pro- 


ceed :— 
Kon 


148 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





“That Sunday evening we sat, one on each 
side of the hearth, in the Vicarage drawing- 
room. She was talking—talking ; and I sat tap- 
ping my foot and whispering to myself, ‘You are 
too fat, Lydia, you are too fat.’ Her talk ran 
on the two sermons I had preached that day, 
the dresses of the congregation, the expense of 
living, the parish ailments — inexhaustible, 
trivial, relentless. Suddenly she looked up and 
our eyes met. Her voice trailed off and dropped 
like a bird wounded in full flight. She stood up 
and took a step towards me. ‘Is anything the 
matter, William?’ she asked solicitously. ‘You 
are too fat, my dear, I answered, laughing, 
and struck her full in the face with my fist. 

“She did not quiver much—not half enough 
—but dropped like a half-full sack on to the 
carpet. I caught up a candle and examined 
her. Her neck was dislocated. She was quite 
dead.” 

The madman skipped up from his boulder, 
and looked at me with indescribable cunning. 

“T am so glad, sir,” he said, “that you did 
not bleed when I struck you; it was a great 


THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRK-ON-SANDS. 149 


mercy. The sight of blood affects me—ah!” 
he broke off with a subtle quiver and drew a 
long breath, “Do you know the sands by 
Woeful Ness—the Twin Brothers ?” he asked. 

I knew that dreary headland well. For half 
a mile beyond the grey Church and Vicarage of 
Bleakirk it extends, forming the northern arm 
of the small fishing-bay, and protecting it from 
the full set of the tides. Towards its end it 
breaks away sharply, and terminates in a dorsal 
ridge of slate-coloured rock that runs out for 
some two hundred feet between the sands we 
call the Twin Brothers. Of these, that to the 
south, and inside the bay, is motionless, and 
bears the name of the ‘Dead-Boy;’ but the 
‘Quick-Boy, to the north, shifts continually. 
It is a quicksand, in short; and will swallow a 
man in three minutes. 

“My mind,” resumed my companion, “was 
soon made up. There is no murder, thought I, 
where there is no corpse. So I propped Lydia 
in the armchair, where she seemed as if napping, 
and went quietly upstairs. I packed a small 
hand-bag carefully with such clothes as _ she 


150 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


would need for a journey, descended with it, 
opened the front door, went out to be sure the 
servants had blown out their lights, returned, 
and hoisting my wife on my shoulder, with the 
bag in my left hand, softly closed the door and 
stepped out into the night. In the shed beside 
the garden-gate the gardener had left his wheel- 
barrow. I fetched it out, set Lydia on the 
top of it, and wheeled her off towards Woeful 
Ness. There was just the rim of a waning 
moon to light me, but I knew every inch of the 
way. 

“For the greater part of it I had turf under- 
foot ; but where this ended and the rock began, 
I had to leave the barrow behind. It was 
ticklish work, climbing down; for footing had 
to be found, and Lydia was a monstrous weight. 
Pah ! how fat she was and clumsy—lolling this 
way and that! Besides, the bag hampered me. 
But I reached the foot at last, and after a short 
rest clambered out along the ridge as fast as I 
could. I was sick and tired of the business. 

“Well, the rest was easy. Arrived at the 
furthest spit of rock, I tossed the bag from me 


2 er 


THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRK-ON-SANDS. 151 


far into the northern sand. Then I turned to 
Lydia, whom I had set down for the moment, 
In the moonlight her lips were parted as though 
she were still chattering; so I kissed her once, 
because I had loved her, and dropped her body 
over into the Quick-Boy Sand. In _ three 
minutes or so I had seen the last of her. 

“T trundled home the barrow, mixed myself 
a glass of whisky, sat beside it for half an hour, 
and then aroused the servants. I was cunning, 
sir; and no one could trace my footprints on 
the turf and rock of Woeful Ness. The missing 
hand-bag, and the disarray I had been careful to 
make, in the bed-room, provided them at once 
with a clue—but it did not lead them to the 
Quick-Boy. For two days they searched; at 
the end of that time it grew clear to them that 
grief was turning my brain. Your father, sir, 
was instant with his sympathy—at least ten 
times a day I had much ado to keep from 
laughing in his face. Finally two doctors 
visited me, and I was taken to a madhouse. 

“T have remained within its walls twenty-nine 
years ; but no—I have never been thoroughly at 


152 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


home there. Two days ago I discovered that 
the place was boring me. So I determined to 
escape; and this to a man of my resources 
presented few difficulties. I borrowed this pony 
from a stable not many yards from the mad- 
house wall; he belongs, I think, to a chimney- 
sweep, and I trust that, after serving my pur- 
pose, he may find a way back to his master.” 

I suppose at this point he must have de- 
tected the question in my eyes, for he cried 
sharply, 

“You wish to know my purpose? It is 
simple.” He passed a thin hand over his fore- 
head. “I have been shut up, as I say, for 
twenty-nine years, and I now discover that the 
madhouse bores me. If they re-take me—and 
the hue and cry must be out long before this— 
I shall be dragged back. What, then, is my 
proposal? I ride to Bleakirk and out along 
the summit of Woeful Ness. There I dismount, 
turn my pony loose, and, descending along the 
ridge, step into the sand that swallowed Lydia. 
Simple, is it not? Hacessi, evasi, evanwi. I 
shall be there before sunset—which reminds 


| 


THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRKE-ON-SANDS. 153 





me,” he added, pulling out his watch, “that my 
time is nearly up. I regret to leave you in this 
plight, but you see how I am placed. I felt, 
when I saw you, a sudden desire to unbosom 
myself of a secret which, until the past half- 
hour, I have shared with no man. I see by 
your eyes again that if set at liberty you would 
interfere with my purpose. It is unfortunate 
that scarcely a soul ever rides this way—I know 
the road of old. But to-morrow is Sunday: I 
will scribble a line and fix it on the church- 
door at Bleakirk, so that the parish may at 
least know your predicament before twenty- 
four hours are out. I must now be going. The 
bandanna about your mouth I entreat you to 
accept as a memento. With renewed apologies, 
sir, I wish you good-day ; and count it extremely 
fortunate that you did not bleed.” 

He nodded in the friendliest manner, turned 
on his heel, and walked quietly towards the 
bridge. As he untethered his pony, mounted, 
and ambled quietly off in the direction of the 


_ coast, I lay stupidly watching him. His black 
_ coat for some time lay, a diminishing blot, on 


154 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES, 


the brown of the moors, stood for a brief mo- 
ment on the sky-line, and vanished. 


I must have lain above an hour in this 
absurd and painful position, wrestling with my 
bonds, and speculating on my chances of passing 
the night by the beck-side. My ankles were 
tied with my own handkerchief, my wrists with 
the thong of my own whip, and this especially 
cut me. It was knotted immovably; but by 
rolling over and rubbing my face into the turf, 
I contrived at length to slip the gag down 
below my chin. This done, I sat up and 
shouted lustily. 

For a long time there was no reply but the 
whinnying of my mare, who seemed to guess 
something was wrong, and pulled at her tether 
until I thought she would break away. I think 
I called a score of times before I heard an 
answering “ Whoo-oop!” far back on the road, 
and a scarlet coat, then another, and finally a 
dozen or more appeared on the crest of the 
hill. It was the hunt returning. 

They saw me at once, and galloped up, 


THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRE-ON-SANDS. 155 


ee ee 


speechless from sheer amazement. I believe 
my hands were loosened before a word was 
spoken. The situation was painfully ridiculous ; 
but my story was partly out before they had 
time to laugh, and the rest of it was gasped 
to the accompaniment of pounding hoofs and 
cracking whips. 

Never did the Netherkirk Hunt ride after 
fox as it rode after the Rev. William Teague 
that afternoon. We streamed over the moor, 
a thin red wave, like a rank of charging cavalry, 
the whip even forgetting his tired hounds that 
straggled aimlessly in our wake. On the hill 
above Bleakirk we saw that the tide was out, 
and our company divided without drawing rein, 
some four horsemen descending to the beach, 
to ride along the sands out under Woeful Ness, 
and across the Dead-Boy, hoping to gain the 
ridge before the madman and cut him off. The 
rest, whom I led by a few yards, breasted the 
height above and thundered past the grey 
churchyard wall. Inside it I caught a flying 
glimpse of the yellow pony quietly cropping 
among the tombs. We had our prey, then, 


156 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


enclosed in that peninsula as in a trap; but 
there was one outlet. 

I remember looking down towards the vil- 
lage as we tore along, and seeing the fisher-folk 
run out at their doors and stand staring at the 
two bodies of horsemen thus rushing to the sea. 
The riders on the beach had a slight lead of us 
at first; but this they quickly lost as their 
horses began to be distressed in the heavy 
sand. I looked back for an instant. The others 
were close at my heels; and, behind again, the 
bewildered hounds followed, yelping mournfully. 
But neither man nor hound could see him whom 
they hunted, for the cliffs edge hid the quick- 
sand in front. 

Presently the turf ceased. Dismounting, I 
ran to the edge and plunged down the rocky 
face. I had descended about twenty feet, when 
I came to the spot where, by craning forward, I 
could catch sight of the spit of rock, and the 
Quick-Boy Sand to the right of it. 

The sun—a blazing ball of red—was just 
now setting behind us, and its level rays 
fell full upon the man we were chasing. 


THE AFFAIR OF BLEAKIRE-ON-SANDS. 157 


He stood on the very edge of the rocks, a 
black spot against the luminous yellow of 
sea and sand. He seemed to be meditating. 
His back was towards us, and he perceived 
neither his pursuers above nor the heads that 
at this moment appeared over the ridge behind 
him, and not fifteen yards away. The party on 
the beach had dismounted and were clambering 
up stealthily. Five seconds more and they could 
spring upon him. 

But they under-estimated a madman’s in- 
stinct. As if for no reason, he gave a quick 
start, turned, and at the same instant was aware 
of both attacking parties. A last gleam of sun- 
light fell on the snuff-box in his left hand; 
his right thumb and fore-finger hung arrested, 
grasping the pinch. For fully half a minute 
nothing happened; hunters and hunted eyed 
each other and waited. Then carrying the snuff 
to his nose, and doffing his hat, with a satirical 
sweep of the hand and a low bow, he turned 
again and tripped off the ledge into the jaws 
of the Quick-Boy. 

There was no help now. At his third step 


158 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


the sand had him by the ankles. For a moment 
he fought it, then, throwing up his arms, sank 
forward, slowly and as if bowing yet, upon his 
face. Second by second we stood and watched 
him disappear. Within five minutes the ripples 
of the Quick-Boy Sand met once more above 


him. 


In the course of the next afternoon the Vicar 
of Bleakirk called at the Hall with a paper 
which he had found pinned to the church door. 
It was evidently a scrap torn from an old letter, 
and bore, scribbled in pencil by a clerkly hand, 
these words: “The young Squire Cartwright in 
straits by the foot-bridge, six miles toward 
Netherkirk. Orate pro anma Guliemli Teague.” 


Il—THE CONSTANT POST-BOY. 


Ir was a stifling August afternoon. Not a 
breath of wind came over the downs, and the 
sky was just a great flaming oven inverted over 
them. I sat down under a dusty gorse-bush (no 
tree could be seen) beside the high-road, and 
tugging off a boot, searched for a prickle that 
somehow had got into it. Then, finding myself 
too hot to pull the boot on again, I turned out 
some crumbs of tobacco from a waistcoat pocket, 
lit my pipe, and unbuckled my pack. 

I “travel” in Tracts, edifying magazines, 
and books on the Holy Land; but in Tracts 
especially. As Watteau painted the ladies and 
eavaliers of Versailles so admirably, because he 
despised them, so I will sell a Tract against any 
man alive. Also, if there be one kind of Tract 
that I loathe more than another, it is the Pink 
Tract. Paper of that colour is sacred to the 
Loves—to stolen kisses and assignations—and 
to see it with a comminatory text tacked on at 


160 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





the foot of the page turns my stomach. I have | 
served in my time many different masters, and 
mistresses; and it still pleases me, after quit- 
ting their service, to recognise the distinction 
between their dues. So it must have been the 
heat that made me select a Pink Tract. I leant 
back with my head in the shadow to digest its 
crude absurdity. 

It was entitled, “How infernally Hot!” I 
doubt not the words were put in the mouth of 
some sinner, and the moral dwelt on their literal 
significance. But half-way down the first page 
sleep must have descended on me: and I woke 
up to the sound of light footsteps. 

Pit-a-pat—pit-a-pat-a-pit-pat. I lifted my 
head. 

Two small children were coming along the 
road towards me, hand-in-hand, through the 
heat—a boy and a girl; who, drawing near and 
spying my long legs sprawling out into the dust, 
came to a stand, finger in mouth. 

“Hullo, my dears!” I called out, “what are 
you doing out in this weather ? ” 

The children stared at one another, and were 


THE CONSTANT POST-BOY. 161 


silent. The girl was about eight years old, 
wore a smart pink frock and sash, a big pink 
sun-bonnet, and carried an apple with a piece 
bitten out. She seemed a little lady; whereas 
the boy wore corduroys and a battered straw 
hat, and was a clod. Both children were ex- 
ceedingly dusty and hot in the cheeks. 

Finally, the girl disengaged her hand and 
stepped forward— 

“If you please, sir, are you a clergyman ?” 

Now this confused me a good deal; for, to 
tell the truth, I had worn a white tie in my 
younger days, before. . . So I sat up and 
asked why she wished to know. 

“ Because we want to be married.” 

I drew a long breath, looked from her to the 
boy, and asked— 

“Ts that so?” 

“She’s_ wishful,” answered he, nodding 
sulkily. 

“Oho!” I thought; “ Adam and Eve and 
the apple, complete. Do you love each other ?” 
I asked. 

“T adore Billy,” cried the little maid “he’s 

L 


162 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


the stable-boy at the ‘Woolpack’ in Blea- 
kirk % 
“So I am beginning to smell,” I put in. 
—“and we put up there last night—father 
and J. We travel in a chaise. And this 
morning in the stable I saw Billy for the first 





time, and to see him is to love. He is far below 
me in station,—ain’t you, Billy dear? But he 
rides beautifully, and is ever so strong, and not 
so badly ed—educated as you would fancy: he 
can say all his ‘five-times.’ And he worships 
me,—don’t you, Billy ?” 

“Washups,” said Billy, stolidly. 

“Do you mean to tell me you have trotted in 
this sun all the way from Bleakirk ?” I inquired. 

The girl nodded. She was a splendid child 
—dark-haired, proud of chin, and thoroughbred 
down to her very toes. And the looks of 
fondness she threw at that stable-urchin were as 
good as a play. 

“ And what will you do,” I asked, “when you 
are married ?” 

“Go home and ask my father’s forgiveness 
He is proud ; but very, very kind.” 


THE CONSTANT POST-BOY. 163 


I told them I was a clergyman, and began to 
east round in my mind what to do next; for the 
marriage service of the Church isn’t exactly the 
thing to repeat to two babes, and the girl was 
quick enough to detect and resent any attempt 
at fooling. So at last I persuaded them to sit 
together under the gorse-bush, and told them 
that matrimony was a serious matter, and that 
a long exhortation was necessary. They settled 
themselves to listen. 

# # % ” x 

Having been twice married, I did not 
lack materials for a discourse. Indeed, when 
I talk of married life, it is a familiar ex- 
perience with me to be carried away by my 
subject. Nor was I altogether surprised, on 
looking up after half an hour’s oratory, to find 
the little ones curled in each other’s arms, fast 
asleep. 

So I spread my coat over them, and next 
(because the fancy took me, and not a breath 
of air was stirring) I treated them much as the 
robins treated the Babes in the Wood, strewing 
all my Tracts, pink and white, over them, till all 

L 2 


164 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


but their faces was covered. And then I set off) 
for the “ Woolpack.” 


One spring morning, ten years later, I was 
standing outside the “ Woolpack,” drinking my 
mug of beer with a tall recruiting sergeant, and 
discussing the similarity of our professions, 
when a post-chaise appeared at the head of the 
street, and a bobbing red postillion’s jacket, and 
a pair of greys that came down the hill with a 
rattle, and drew up at the inn-door. 

A young lady and a young gentleman sat in 
the chaise, and the first glance told they were 
newly married. They sat in the chaise, and 
held each other by the hand, while the horses 
were changing. And because I had a bundle of 
tracts that fitted their condition, and because 
the newly married often pay for a thing beyond 
its worth, I approached the chaise-door. 

The fresh horses were in as I began my — 
apologies; and the post-boy was settling himself 
in the saddle. Judge of my astonishment when 
he leant back, cut me sharply across the calves 
with his long whip, and before I could yell had 


THE CONSTANT POST-BOY. 165 


started his horses up the opposite hill at a 
gallop. The hind wheel missed my toes by an 
inch. In three minutes the carriage and red 
coat were but a speck on the road that led up to 
the downs. 

I returned to my mug, emptied it moodily, 
broke a fine repartee on the sergeant’s dull head 
(he was consumed with mirth), and followed the 
same road at a slow pace; for my business took 
me along it. 


I was on the downs, and had walked, 
perhaps, six miles, when again I saw the red 
speck ahead of me. It was the post-boy—a 
post-boy returning on foot, of all miracles. He 
came straight up to meet me, and then stood 
in the road, barring my path, and tapping his 
riding-boot with the butt of his whip—a 
handsome young fellow, well proportioned and 
well set up. 

“T want you,” he said, “to walk back with 
me to Bleakirk.” 

“Upon my word!” I cried out. “Consider- 
ing that Bleakirk is six miles away, that 1 am 


166 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


walking in the other direction, and that, two \ 


hours back, you gave me a cursed cut over the 
legs with that whip, I fancy I see myself 
obliging you!” 

He regarded me moodily for about a minute, 
but did not shift his position. 

“Why are you on foot ?” I asked. 

“Oh, my God!” he cried out quickly, as a 
man might that was stabbed; “I couldn’t trust 
myself to ride; I couldn’t.”. He shuddered, and 
put a hand over his eyes. “Look here,” he said, 
“you must walk home with me, or at least see 
me past the Chalk-pit.” 

Now the Chalk-pit, when spelt with a capital 
letter, is an especially deep and ugly one on the 
very edge of the Bleakirk road, about two miles 
out of the village. A weak fence only separates 
its lip from the macadam. It is a nasty place to 
pass by night with a carriage; but here it was 
broad day, and the fellow was walking. So I 
didn’t take him at all. 

“Listen to me,” he went on in a dull voice; 
“do you remember sitting beside this road, close 
on ten years back? And a boy and girl who 


eS 


THE CONSTANT POST-BOY. 167 





came along this road together and asked you to 
marry them ?” 

“Bless my soul! Were you that boy?” 

He nodded. “Yes: and the young lady in 
the chaise to-day was that girl Old man, I 
know you reckon yourself clever,—I’ve heard 
you talk: but that when I met her to-day, 
three hours married, and she didn’t know me, I 
had a hell in my heart as I drove past the 
Chalk-pit, is a thing that passes your under- 
standing, perhaps. They were laughing to- 
gether, mark you, and yet they weren’t a hair's 
breadth from death. And, by the Lord, you 
must help me past that pit !” 

“Young man,” I said, musing, “when first I 
met you, you were ten years old, and I thought 
you a fool. To-day you have grown into an 
unmitigated ass. But you are dangerous; 
and therefore I respect you, and will see you 
home.” 

I turned back with him. When we came to 
the Chalk-pit, I kept him on the farther side 
of the road, though it cost me some terror to 
walk between him and the edge; for I have 


168 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


too much imagination to be a thoroughly brave 
man. 


The sun was sinking as we walked down to 
Bleakirk ; and the recruiting sergeant sat asleep 
outside the “ Woolpack,” with his head on the 
window-sill I woke him up; and within half 
an hour my post-boy wore a bunch of ribbons on 
his cap—red, white, and blue. 

I believe he has seen some fighting since 
then; and has risen in the ranks. 


A DARK MIRROR. 


In the room of one of my friends hangs a 
mirror. It is an oblong sheet of glass, set in a 
frame of dark, highly varnished wood, carved in 
the worst taste of the Regency period, and 
relieved with faded gilt. Glancing at it from a 
distance, you would guess the thing a relic from 
some “genteel” drawing-room of Miss Austen’s 
time. But go nearer and look into the glass 
itself, By some malformation or mere freak of 
make, all the images it throws back are livid. 
Flood the room with sunshine ; stand before this 
glass with youth and hot blood tingling on your 
cheeks; and the glass will give back neither 
sun nor colour; but your own face, blue and 
dead, and behind it a horror of inscrutable 
shadow. 

- Since I heard this mirror’s history, I have 
stood more than once and twice before it, and 
peered into this shadow. And these are the 
simulacra I seem to have seen there darkly. 


170 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


I have seen a bleak stone parsonage, 
hemmed in on two sides by a grave-yard ; and 
behind for many miles nothing but sombre 
moors climbing and stretching away. I have 
heard the winds moaning and wuthering 
night and morning, among the gravestones, and 
around the angles of the house; and crossing 
the threshold, I know by instinct that this 
mirror will stand over the mantelpiece in the 
bare room to the left. I know also to whom 
those four suppressed voices will belong that 
greet me while yet my hand is on the latch. 
Four children are within—three girls and a boy 
—and they are disputing over a box of wooden 
soldiers. The eldest girl, a plain child with 
reddish-brown eyes, and the most wonderfully 
small hands, snatches up one of the wooden 
soldiers, crying, “This is the Duke of Welling- 
ton! This shall be the Duke!” and her soldier 
is the gayest of all, and the tallest, and the most 
perfect in every part. The second girl makes 
her choice, and they call him “Gravey” because 
of the solemnity of his painted features. And 
then all laugh at the youngest girl, for she has 





A DARK MIRROR. 171 


chosen a queer little warrior, much like herself; 
but she smiles at their laughter, and smiles 
again when they christen him “ Waiting Boy.” 
Lastly the boy chooses. He is handsomer than 
his sisters, and is their hope and pride; and has 
a massive brow and a mouth well formed though 
a trifle loose. His soldier shall be called Bona- 
parte. 

Though the door is closed between us, I can 
see these motherless children under this same 
blue mirror—the glass that had helped to pale 
the blood on their mother’s face after she left 
the warm Cornish sea that was her home, and 
came to settle and die in this bleak exile. Some 
of her books are in the little bookcase here. 
They were sent round from the West by sea, 
and met with shipwreck. For the most part 
they are Methodist Magazines—for, like most 
Cornish folk, her parents were followers of 
Wesley—and the stains of the salt water are 
still on their pages. 

I know also that the father will be sitting in 
the room to my right—sitting at his solitary 
meal, for his digestion is queer, and he prefers to 


172 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. — 


dine alone: a strange, small, purblind man, full 
of sorrow and strong will. He is a clergyman, | 
but carries a revolver always in his pocket by 
day, and by night sleeps with it under his 
pillow. He has done so ever since some one 
told him that the moors above were unsafe for 
a person with his opinions. 

All this the glass shows me, and more. I 
see the children growing up. I see the girls 
droop and pine in this dreary parsonage, where 
the winds nip, and the miasma from the church- 
yard chokes them. I see the handsome promis- 
ing boy going to the devil—slowly at first, 
then by strides. As their hope fades from his 
sisters’ faces, he drinks and takes to opium-eat- 
ing—and worse. He comes home from a short 
absence, wrecked in body and soul. After this 
there is no rest in the house. He sleeps in the 
room with that small, persistent father of his, 
and often there are sounds of horrible strug- 
glings within it. And the girls le awake, sick 
with fear, listening, till their ears grow heavy 
and dull, for the report of their father’s pistol. 
At morning, the drunkard will stagger out, and 


A DARK MIRROR. 178 


look perhaps into this glass, that gives him back 
more than all his despair. “The poor old man 
and I have had a terrible night of it,’ he 
stammers; “he does his best—the poor old 
man! but it’s all over with me.” 

I see him go headlong at last and meet his 
end in the room above after twenty minutes’ 
struggle, with a curious desire at the last to play 
the man and face his death standing. I see the 
second sister fight with a swiftly wasting 
disease; and, because she is a solitary Titanic 
spirit, refuse all help and solace. She gets up 
one morning, insists on dressing herself, and 
dies; and the youngest sister follows her but 
more slowly and tranquilly, as beseems her 
gentler nature. 

Two only are left now—the queer father and 
the eldest of the four children, the reddish-eyed 
girl with the small hands, the girl who “never 
talked hopefully.” Fame has come to her and 
to her dead sisters. For looking from childhood 
into this livid glass that reflected their world, 
they have peopled it with strange spirits. Men 
and women in the real world recognise the awful 


174 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


power of these spirits, without understanding 
them, not having been brought up themselves in 
front of this mirror. But the survivor knows 
the mirror too well. 

“ Mademoiselle, vous étes triste.” 

“ Monsieur, jen ar bien le droit.” 

With a last look I see into the small, 
commonplace church that les just below the 
parsonage: and on a tablet by the altar I cad a 
list of many names. . . . . 


And the last is that of Charlotte Bronté. 





THE SMALL PEOPLE. 


To a Lady who had asked 
for a Fairy Tale. 


You thought it natural, my dear lady, to lay 
this command on me at the dance last night. 
We had parted, two months ago, in London, and 
we met, unexpectedly and to music, in this 
corner of the land where (they say) the piskies 
still keep. And certainly, when I led you out 
upon the balcony (that you might not see the 
new moon through glass and lose a lucky 
month), it was not hard to picture the Small 
People at their play on the turf and among 
the dim flower-beds below us. But, as a matter 
of fact, they are dead, these Small People. 
They were the long-lived but not immortal 
spirits of the folk who inhabited Cornwall many 
thousands of years back—far beyond Christ’s 
birth, They were “poor innocents,” not good 
enough for heaven yet too good for the eternal 
fires; and when they first came, were of ordinary 


176 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


stature. But after Christ’s birth they began to 
grow smaller and smaller, and at length turned 
into emmets and vanished from the earth. 

The last I heard of them was a sad and 
serious little history, very different from the old 
legends. Part of it I was told by a hospital 
surgeon, of all people in the world. Part I 
learnt by looking at your beautiful gown last 
night, as you leant on the balcony-rail. You 
remember how heavy the dew was, and that I 
fetched a shawl for your shoulders. You did 
not wrap it so tightly round but that four 
marguerites in gold embroidery showed on the 
front of your bodice; and these come into the 
tale, the remainder of which I was taught this 
morning before breakfast, down among the 
cairns by the sea where the Small People’s 
Gardens still remain—sheltered spots of green, 
with here and there some ferns and cliff-pinks 
left. For me they are libraries where sometimes 
I read for a whole summer’s day; and with the 
help of the hospital surgeon, I bring you from 
them a story about your ball-gown which is 
perfectly true. 


, a 


THE SMALL PEOPLE. 177 


Twenty years ago—before the fairies had 
dwindled into ants, and when wayfarers were 
still used to turn their coats inside out, after 
nightfall, for fear of being “ pisky-led”—there 
lived, down at the village, a girl who knew all 
the secrets of the Small People’s Gardens. 
Where you and I discover sea-pinks only, and 
hear only the wash of the waves, she would go 
on midsummer nights and find flowers of every 
colour spread, and hundreds of little I'ghts 
moving among them, and fountains and water- 
falls and swarms of small ladies and gentle- 
men, dressed in green and gold, walking and 
sporting among them, or reposing on the turf 
and telling stories to the most ravishing soft 
music. This was as much as she would relate; 
but it is certain that the piskies were friends of 
hers. For, in spite of her nightly wanderings, 
her housework was always well and cleanly done 
before other girls were dressed—the morning 
milk fresh in the dairy, the step sanded, the 
fire lit and the scalding-pans warming over it. 
And as for her needlework, it was a wonder. 


Some said she was a changeling; others that 
M 


178 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


she had found the four-leaved clover or the fairy 
ointment, and rubbed her eyes with it. But it 
was her own secret; for whenever the people 
tried to follow her to the “Gardens,” whir! 
whir ! whir! buzzed in their ears, as if a flight 
of bees were passing, and every limb would feel 
as if stuck full of pins and pinched with 
tweezers, and they were rolled over and over, 
their tongues tied as if with cords, and at last, 
as soon as they could manage, they would pick 
themselves up, and hobble home for their 
lives. 

Well, the history—which, I must remind 
you, is a true one—goes on to say that in time 
the girl grew ambitious, or fell in love (I cannot 
remember which), and went to London. In any 
case it must have been a strong call that took 
her: for there are no fairies in London. I regret 
that my researches do not allow me to tell you 
how the Small People at home took her de- 
parture; but we will suppose that it grieved 
them deeply. Nor can I say precisely how the 
girl fared for many years. I think her fortune 
contained both joy and sorrow for a while; and 


a = 


THE SMALL PEOPLE. 179 


I suspect that many passages of her life would 
be sadly out of place in this story, even if they 
could be hunted out. Indeed, fairy-tales have — 
to omit so much nowadays, and therefore seem 
so antiquated, that one marvels how they could 
ever have been in fashion. 

But you may take it as sure that in the end 
this girl met with more sorrow than joy; for 
when next she comes into sight it is in London 
streets and she is in rags. Moreover, though she 
wears a flush on her cheeks, above the wrinkles 
it does not come of health or high spirits, but 
perhaps from the fact that in the twenty years’ 
interval she has seen millions of men and 
women, but not one single fairy. 

In those latter days I met her many times. 
She passed under your windows shortly before 
dawn on the night that you gave your dance, 
early in the season. You saw her, I think ?— 
a woman who staggered a little, and had some 
words with the policeman at the corner: but, 
after all, a staggering woman in London is no 
such memorable sight. All day long she was 
seeking work, work, work; and after dark she 

M 2 


180 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





sought forgetfulness. She found the one, in 
small quantities, and out of it she managed to 
buy the other, now and then, over the counter. 
But she had long given up looking for the 
fairies. The lights along the Embankment had 
ceased to remind her of those in the Small 
People’s Gardens; nor did the noise bursting 
from music-hall doors as she passed, recall the 
old sounds; and as for the scents, there were 
plenty in London, but none resembling that 
of the garden which you might smell a mile 
out at sea. 

I told you that her needlework had been a 
marvel when she lived down at the village. 
Curiously enough, this was the one gift of the 
fairies that stayed by her, and it remained as 
wonderful as ever. Her most frequent employer 
was a flat-footed Jew with a large, fleshy face; 
and because she had a name for honesty, she 
was not seldom entrusted with costly pieces of 
stuff, and allowed to carry them home to turn 
into ball-dresses under the roof through the 
gaps of which, as she stitched, she could see 
the night pass from purple to black, and from 


THE SMALL PEOPLE. 181 


black to the lilac of daybreak. There, with a 
hundred pounds’ worth of silk and lace on her 
knee, she would sit and work a dozen hours 
to earn as many pence. With fingers weary 
and. 





But you know Hood’s song, and no 
doubt have taken it to heart a dozen times. 

It came to this, however, that one evening, 
when she had not eaten for forty hours, her 
employer gave her a piece of embroidery to 
work against time. The fact is, my dear lady, 
that you are very particular about having your 
commissions executed to the hour, and your 
dressmakers are anxious to oblige, knowing that 
you never squabble over the price. To be sure, 
you have never heard of the flat-footed Jew 
man—how should you? And we may believe 
that your dressmakers knew just as little of the 
poor woman who had used to be the friend of 
the Small People. But the truth remains that, 
in the press of your many pleasures, you were 
pardonably twenty-four hours late in ordering 
the gown in which you were to appear an 
angel. 

Ah, madam! will it comfort you to hear that 


182 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


you were the one to reconcile the Small People 
with that poor sister of yours who had left them, 
twenty years before, and wanted them so sorely ? 
The hospital doctor gave her complaint a long 
name, and I gather that it has a place by itself 
in books of pathology. But the woman’s tale 
was that, after she had been stitching through 
the long night, the dawn came through the roof 
and found her with four marguerites still left to 
be embroidered in gold on the pieces of satin 
that lay in her lap. She threaded her needle 
afresh, rubbed her weary eyes, and began— 
when, lo! a miracle. 

Instead of one hand, there were four at 
work—four hands, four needles, four lines of 
thread. The four marguerites were all being 
embroidered at the same time! The piskies had 
forgiven, had remembered her at last, after these 
many years, and were coming to her help, as of 
old. Ah, madam, the tears of thankfulness that 
ran from her hot eyes and fell upon those golden 
marguerites of yours ! 


Of course her eyes were disordered. There 


THE SMALL PEOPLE, 183 


was only one flower, really. There was only 
one embroidered in the morning, when they 
found her sobbing, with your bodice still in her 
lap, and took her to the hospital; and that is 
why the dressmakers failed to keep faith with 
you for once, and made you so angry. 

Dear lady, the piskies are not easily sum- 
moned, in these days. 





THE MAYOR OF GANTICK. 


ONE of these days I hope to write a treatise 
on the Mayors of Cornwall—dignitaries whose 
pleasant fame is now night, remembered only in 
some neat by-word or saying of the country 
people. Thus you may hear, now and again, of 
“the Mayor of Falmouth, who thanked God 
when the town gaol was enlarged,” “the Mayor 
of Market Jew, sitting in his own light,” or 
“the Mayor of Calenich, who walked two miles 
to ride one.” But the one whose history per- 
plexed me most, till I heard the truth from an 
eye-witness, was “the mad Mayor of Gantick, 
who was wise for a long day, and then died 
of it.” 

It was an old tin-streamer who told me—a 
thin fellow with a shrivelled mouth, and a back 
bent two-double. And I heard it on the very 
hearthstone of the Mayor’s cottage, one after- 
noon, as we sat and smoked in the shadow of 
the crumbling mud wall, with a square of blue 


186 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


sky for roof, and for carpet a tangle of brambles, 
nettles, and rank grass. 


It seems that the village of Gantick, half a 
mile away, was used once in every year to purge 
itself of evil. To this end the villagers prepared 
a huge dragon of pasteboard and marched out 
with it to a sandy common, since cut up by tin- 
works, but still known as Dragon’s Moor. Here 
they would choose one of their number to be 
Mayor, and submit to him all questions of con- 
science, and such cases of notorious evil living as 
the law failed to provide for. Summary justice 
waited on all his decisions ; and as the village 
wag was usually chosen for the post, you may 
guess that the horse-play was rough at times. 
When this was over, and the public conscience 
purified, the company fell on the pasteboard 
dragon with sticks and whacked him into small 
pieces, which they buried in a small hollow 
called Dragon Pit; and so returned gladly to 
their homes to start on another twelve months 
of sin. 

This feast of purification fell always on the 


THE MAYOR OF GANTICK. 187 


12th of July; and in the heyday of its celebra- 
tion there lived in this cottage a widow-woman 
and her only son, a demented man about forty 
years old. There was no harm in the poor 
creature, who worked at the Lanihorne slate- 
quarries, six miles off, as a “hollibubber”— 
that is to say, in carting away the refuse 
slate. Every morning he walked to his 
work, mumbling to himself as he went; and 
though the children followed him at times, 
hooting and flinging stones, they grew tired at | 
last, finding that he never resented it. His 
mother—a tall, silent woman with an inscrut- 
able face—had supper ready for him when he 
returned, and often was forced to feed him, 
while he unlocked his tongue and babbled over 
the small adventures of the day. He was not 
one of those gifted idiots who hear voices in the 
wind and know the language of the wild birds. 
His talk was merely imbecile ; and, for the rest, 
he had large grey eyes, features of that regu- 
larity which we call Greek, and stood six foot 
two in his shoes. 

One hot morning—it was the 12th of July— 


183 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


he was stariing for his work when an indescrib- 
able hubbub sounded up the road, and presently 
came by the whole rabble of Gantick with cow- 
horns and instruments of percussion, and in 
their midst the famous dragon—all green, with 
fiery, painted eyes, and a long tongue of red 
flannel. Behind it the prisoners were escorted 
—a pale woman or two with dazed, terrified 
eyes, an old man suspected of egg-stealing, a 
cow addicted to trespass, and so on. 

The Mayor was not chosen yet, this cere- 
mony being deferred by rule till the crowd 
reached Dragon’s Moor. But drawing near the 
cottage door and catching sight of the half- 
witted man with his foot on the threshold, a 
village wit called out and proposed that they 
should take “the Mounster ” (as he was called) 
along with them for Mayor. 

It hit the mob’s humour, and they cheered. 
The Mounster’s mother, standing in the door- 
way, went white as if painted. 

“Man in the lump’s a hateful animal,” she 
said to herself, hoarsely. “Come indoors, 
Jonathan, an’ let ’em go by.” 





THE MAYOR OF GANTICK. 189 


“Come an’ rule over us,” the crowd invited 
him, and a gleam of proud delight woke in his 
silly face. 

“The heat—his head won’t stand it.” The 
woman looked up at the cloudless sky. “For 
God’s sake take your fun elsewhere!” she cried. 

The women who were led to judgment 
looked at her stupidly. They too suffered, with- 
out understanding, the heavy sport of men. At 
last one said— 

“Old woman, let him come. We'll have 
more mercy from a mazed man.” 

“Sister, you’ve been loose, they tell me,” 
answered the old woman, “an’ must eat the 
bitter fruit ot But my son’s an inno- 
cent. Jonathan, theyll look for you at the 
works.” 

“There’s prouder work for me ’pon Dragon’s 
Moor,” the Mounster decided, with smiling eyes. 
“ Come along, mother, an’ see me exalted.” 

The crowd bore him off at their head, and 
the din broke out again. The new Mayor 
strutted among them with lifted chin and a 
radiant face. He thought it glorious. His 


190 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


mother ran into the cottage, fetched a bottle 
and followed after the dusty tail of the pro- 
cession. Once, as they were passing a running 
stream, she halted and filled the bottle care- 
fully, emptying it again and again until the 
film outside the glass was to her liking. 
Then she followed again, and came to Dragon’s 
Moor. 

They sat the Mayor on a mound, took off his 
hat, placed a crown on his head and a broom- 
stick in his hand, and brought him the cases to 
try. 

The first was a grey mare, possessed (they 
alleged) with a devil. Her skin hung like a 
sack on her bones. 

“Tis Eli Thoms’ mare. What’s to be done 
to cure her?” they asked. 

“Let Eli Thoms buy a comb, an’ comb his 
mare’s tail while she eats her feed. So Eli ‘Il 
know if ’tis the devil or no that steals oats from 
his manger.” 

They applauded his wisdom and _ brought 
forward the woman who had pleaded just now 
with his mother. 


RS ee 


THE MAYOR OF GANTICK. 191 


“Who made her ?” he asked, having listened 
to the charge. 

“God, ’tis to be supposed.” 

“God makes no evil.” 

“The Devil, then.” 

“Then whack the Devil.” 

They fell on the pasteboard dragon and 
belaboured him. The sun poured down on the 
Mayor’s throne; and his mother, who sat by his 
right hand wondering at his sense, gave him 
water to drink from the bottle. They brought a 
third case—a boy who had been caught tortur- 
ing a cow. He had taken a saw, and tried to 
saw off one of her horns while she was tethered 
in her stall. 

The Mayor leapt up from his seat. 

“Kill him!” he shouted, “take him off and 
kill him!” His face was twisted with passion, 
and he lifted his stick. The crowd fell back for 
a second, but the old woman leant forward and 
touched her son softly on the leg. He stopped 
short: the anger died out of his face, and he 
shivered. 

“No,” he said, “I was wrong, naybours. The 


192 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


boy is mad, I think; an’ ’tis a terrible lot, to be 
mad. This is the Devil’s doing, out o’ doubt. 
Beat the Devil.” 

“Simme,” said one in the crowd, “the sins o’ 
Gantick be wearin’ out the smoky man at a 
terrible rate.” 

“ Ay,” answered another, “His Naughtiness 
bain’t ekal to Gantick.” And this observation 
was the original of a proverb, still repeated— 
“ As naughty as Gantick, where the Devil struck 
for shorter hours.” 

There was no cruelty that day on Dragon’s 
Moor. All the afternoon the mad Mayor sat in 
the sun’s eye and gave judgment, while his 
mother from time to time wiped away the froth 
that gathered on his lips, and moistened them 
with water from her bottle. From first to last 
she never spoke a word, but sat with a horror in 
her eyes, and watched the flushed cheeks of this 
grown-up, bearded son. And all the afternoon 
the men of Gantick brayed the Devil into 
shreds. 


I said there was no cruelty on Dragon’s 





THE MAYOR OF GANTICK. 193 


Moor that day. But at sundown the Mayor 
turned to his mother and said— 

“ We’ve been over-hasty, mother. We ought 
to ha’ found out who made the Devil what he is.” 

At last the sun dropped; a shadow fell on 
the brown moors and crept up the mound where 
the mother and son sat. The brightness died 
out of the Mayor’s face. 

Three minutes after, he flung up his hands 
and cried, “ Mother—my head, my head !” 

She rose, still without a word, pulled down 
his arms, slipped one within her own, and led 
him away to the road. The crowd did not inter- 
fere; they were burying the broken dragon, 
with shouts and rough play. 

A woman followed them to the road, and 
tried to clasp the Mayor's knees as he staggered. 

His mother beat her away. 

“Off wi’ you!” she cried ; “’tis your reproach 
he’s bearin ’.” 

She helped him slowly home. In the 
shadow of the cottage the inspired look that he 
had worn all day returned fora moment. Then 
a convulsion took him, casting him on the floor. 

N 


194 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


At nine o'clock he died, with his head on her 
lap. 

She closed his eyes, smoothed the wrinkles 
on his tired face, and sat watching him for some 
time. At length she lifted and laid him on the 
deal table at full length, bolted the door, put the 
heavy shutter on the low window, and began to 
light the fire. 

For fuel she had a heap of peat-turves and 
some sticks. Having lit it, she set a crock of 
water to warm, and undressed the man slowly. 
Then, the water being ready, she washed and 
laid him out, chafing his limbs and talking to 
herself all the while. 

“Fair, straight legs,” she said; “beautiful 
body that leapt in my side, forty years back, and 
thrilled me! How proud I was! Why did God 
make you beautiful ?” 


All night she sat caressing him. And the 
smoke of the peat-turves, finding no exit and no 
draught to carry them up the chimney, crept 
around and killed her quietly beside her son. 





THE DOCTOR'S FOUNDLING. 


THERE are said to be many vipers on the Downs 
above the sea; but it was so pleasant to find a 
breeze up there allaying the fervid afternoon, 
that I risked the consequences and stretched 
myself at full length, tilting my straw hat well 
over my nose. 

Presently, above the tic-a-tic-tick of the 
grasshoppers, and the wail of a passing gull, a 
human sound seemed to start abruptly out of 
the solitude—the voice of a man singing. I 
rose on my elbow, and pushed the straw hat up 
a bit. Under its brim through the quivering 
ai_aosphere, I saw the fellow, two hundred yards 
away, a dark obtrusive blot on the bronze land- 
scape. He was coming along the track that 
would lead him down-hill to the port; and his 
voice fell louder on the still air— 

N 2 


196 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“Ho! the prickly briar, 
It prickles my throat so sore— 
If I get out o’ the prickly briar, 
Iu never get mm any more. 


Ho! just loosen the rope” 





At this point I must have come within 
his view, for he halted a moment, and then 
turned abruptly out of the track towards me, 
—a scare-crow of a figure, powdered white 
with dust. In spite of the weather, he wore 
his tattered coat buttoned at the throat, with 
the collar turned up. Probably he possessed 
no shirt; certainly no socks, for his toes pro- 
truded from the broken boots. He was quite 
young. 

Without salutation he dropped on the turf 
two paces off and remarked— 

“Tt’s bleedin’ ’ot.” 

There was just a pause while he cast his eyes 
back on the country he had travelled; then, 
jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the 
direction of the port, he inquired— 

“’Qw’s the old lot?” 


en a ns 


THE DOCTOR’S FOUNDLING. 197 


Said I, “Look here; you're Dick Jago. How 
far have you walked to-day ?” 

He had turned on me as if ready with a 
sharp question, but changed his mind and 
answered doggedly— 

“ All the way from Drakeport.” 

“Very well; then it’s right-about-face with 
you and back to Drakeport before I let you go. 
Do you see this stick? If you attempt to walk a 
step more towards the port, I'll crack your head 
with it.” 

He gulped down something in his throat. 
“Ts the old man ill?” he asked. 

“ He’s dead,” said I, simply. 

The fellow turned his eyes to the horizon, 
and began whistling the air of “The Prickly 
Briar” softly to himself. And while he whistled, 
my memory ran back to the day when he first 
came to trouble us, and play the fiend’s mischief 
with a couple of dear honest hearts. 


The day I travelled back to was one in the 
prime of May, when the lilacs were out by 
Dr. Jago’s green gate, and the General from 


198 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


Drakeport Barracks, with the red and white 
feathers in his cocked-hat, had just cantered 
up the street, followed by a dozen shouting 
urchins, on his way to the Downs. For it 
was the end of the militia-training, when the 
review was always held; and all the morning 
the bugles had been sounding at the head 
of every street and lane where the men were 
billeted. | 

When the gold-laced General disappeared, he 
left the streets all but empty; for the towns- 
people by this time had flocked to the Downs. 
Only by Dr. Jago’s gate there stood a small 
group in the sunshine. Kitty, the doctor’s mare 
that had pulled his gig for ten years, was 
standing saddled in the roadway, with a stable- 
boy at her head; just outside the gate, the little 
doctor himself in regimentals and black cocked- 
hat with black feathers, regarding her; behind, 
the pleasant old face of his wife, regarding him ; 
and, behind again, the two maid-servants re- 
garding the group generally from behind their 
mistress’s shoulder. 

“ Maria, I shall never do it,” said the doctor, 


\ 


ee ee 


THE DOCTOR'S FOUNDLING. 199 


measuring with his eye the distance between the 
ground and the stirrup. 

“Indeed, John, I don’t think you will.” 

“There was a time when I'd have vaulted 
it. I’m abominably late as it is, Maria.” 

“Shall I give master a leg up?” suggested 
one of the maids. — 

“No, Susan, you will do nothing of the 
kind.” Mrs. Jago paused, her brow wrinkled 
beneath her white lace cap. Then an inspiration 
came—‘ The chair—a kitchen chair, Susan !” 

The maid flew; the chair was brought; and 
that is how the good old doctor mounted for the 
review. Three minutes later he was trotting 
soberly up the street, pausing twice to kiss his 
hand to his wife, who watched him proudly from 
the green gate, and took off her spectacles and 
wiped them, the better to see him out of sight. 

By the time Dr. Jago reached the Downs, 
the review was in full swing. The colonel 
shouted, the captains shouted, the regiment 
formed, re-formed, marched, charged at the 
double, and fired volleys of blank cartridges. 
The General and orderlies galloped from spot to 


200 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


spot without apparent object; and all was very 
martial, At last the doctor grew tired of 
trotting up and down without being wanted. 
He thought with longing of some pools, half a 
mile away, in a hollow of the Downs, that con- 
tained certain freshwater shells about which he 
held a theory. The afternoon was hot. He 
glanced round—no one seemed to want him: so 
he turned Kitty into a grassy defile that led to 
the pools, and walked her leisurely away. 

Half an hour later he stood, ankle-deep in 
water, groping for his shells and oblivious of 
the review, the firing that echoed far away, the 
flight of time—everything. Kitty, with one 
fore-leg through the bridle, was cropping on the 
brink. Minutes passed, and the doctor raised 
his head, for the blood was running into it. At 
that moment his eye was caught by a scarlet 
object under a gorse-bush on the opposite bank. 
He gave a second look, then waded across 
towards it. 

It was a baby: a baby not a week old, 
wrapped only in a red handkerchief. 

The doctor bent over it. The infant opened 


we 


\ 


THE DOCTORS FOUNDLING. 201 


its eyes and began to wail. At this instant an 
orderly appeared on the ridge above, scanning 
the country. He caught sight of the doctor and 
descended to the opposite shore of the pool, 
where he saluted and yelled his message. It 
appeared that some awkward militiaman had 
blown his thumb off in the blank cartridge 
practice and surgical help was wanted at 
once. 

Doctor Jago dropped the corner of the hand- 
kerchief, returned across the pool, was helped on 
to Kitty's back and cantered away, the orderly 
after him. 

In an hour’s time, having put on a tourni- 
quet and bandaged the hand, he was back again 
by the pool. The baby was still there. He 
lifted it and found a scrap of paper under- 
neath. 


The doctor returned by devious ways to his 
home, a full hour before he was expected. He 
rode in at the back gate, where to his secret 
satisfaction he found no stable-boy. So he 
stabled Kitty himself, and crept into his own 


202 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


house like a thief. Nor was it like his habits to 
pay, as he did, a visit to the little cupboard 
(where the brandy-bottle was kept) underneath 
the stairs, before entering the drawing-room, 
with his face full of guilt and diplomacy. 

“Gracious, John!” cried out Mrs. Jago, 
dropping her knitting. “Is the review over 
already ?” 

°“No, I don’t think it is—at least, I don’t 
know,” stammered the doctor. 

“John, you have had another attack of that 
vertigo.” 

“Upon my honour I have not, Maria.” The 
doctor was vehement; for the vertigo necessi- 
tated brandy, and a visit to the little cupboard 
below the stairs meant hideous detection. 

So he sat up and tried to describe the review 
to his wife, and made such an abject mess of it, 
that after twenty minutes she made up her 
mind that he must have a headache, and, 
leaving the room quietly, went to the little cup- 
board below the stairs. She found the door 
ajar. 

When, after a long absence, she reappeared 


. ~ 


THE DOCTORS FOUNDLING. 203 


in the drawing-room, she had forgotten to bring 
the brandy, and wore a look as guilty as her 
husband’s. So they sat together and talked in 
the twilight on trivial matters; and each had 
a heart insufferably burdened, and each was 
waiting desperately for an opportunity to lighten 
it. 

“John,” said Mrs. Jago at last, “we are 
getting poor company for each other.” 

“ Maria !” 

The doctor leapt to his feet: and these old 
souls, who knew each other so passing well, 
looked into each other’s eyes, half in terror. 


At that instant a feeble wail smote on their 
ears. It came from the cupboard underneath 
the stairs. 

“Maria! I put it there myself, two hours 
ago, I picked it up on the downs. I’ve 
been——” 

“You! I thought it was some beggar- 
woman’s doing. John, John—why didn’t you 
say so before !” 

And she rushed out of the room. 


204 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


This seedy scamp who reclined beside me 
was the child that she brought back with her 
from the little cupboard. They had adopted 
him, fed him, educated him, wrapped him round 
with love; and he had lived to break their 
hearts. Possibly there was some gipsy blood in 
him that defied their nurture. But the specu- 
lation is not worth going into. I only know 
that I felt the better that afternoon as I 
watched his figure diminishing on the road back 
to Drakeport. He had a crown of mine in his 
pocket, and was still singing— 


“ Ho! just loosen the rope, 
If it’s only gust for a while ; 
I fancy I see my father coming 
Across from yonder stile.” 


I had lied in telling him that the old doctor was 
dead. As a matter of fact he lay dying that 
afternoon. Half-way down the hill I saw the 
small figure of Jacobs, the sexton, turn in at the 


church-gate. He was going to toll the passing- 
bell. 


THE GIFTS OF FEOQDOR HIMKOFF. 


IT is just six years ago that I first travelled the 
coast from Gorrans Haven to Zoze Point. 

Since then I have visited it in fair weather 
and foul; and in time, perhaps, shall rival the 
coastguardsmen, who can walk it blindfold. But 
to this day it remains in my recollection the 
coast I trod, without companion, during four 
dark days in December. It was a rude intro- 
duction. The wind blew in my face, with scuds 
of cold rain; a leaden mist hung low on the 
left, and rolled slowly up Channel. Now and 
then it thinned enough to reveal a white zigzag 
of breakers in front, and a blur of land; or, far 
below, a cluster of dripping rocks, with the sea 
crawling between and lifting their weed. But 
for the most part I saw only the furze-bushes 
beside the path, each powdered with fine rain- 
drops, that in the aggregate resembled a coat of 
grey frieze, and the puffs of spray that shot up 
over the cliff’s lip and drenched me. 


206 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


Just beyond the Nare Head, where the path 
dipped steeply, a bright square disengaged itself 
from the mist as I passed, and, around it, the 
looming outline of a cottage, between the foot- 
path and the sea. <A habitation more desolate 
than this odd angle of the coast could hardly 
have been chosen; on the other hand, the glow 
of firelight within the kitchen window was 
almost an invitation. It seemed worth my 
while to ask for a drink of milk there, and find 
out what manner of folk were the inmates. 

An old woman answered my knock. She 
was tall, with a slight stoop, and a tinge of 
yellow pervading her face, as if some of the 
complexion had run into her teeth and the 
whites of her eyes. A clean white cap, tied 
under the chin with tape, concealed all but the 
edge of her grey locks. She wore a violet turn- 
over, a large wrapper, a brown stuff gown that 
hardly reached her ankles, and thick worsted 
stockings, but no shoes. 

“A drink o milk? Why not a dish o’ 
tea?” 

“That will be troubling you,” said I, a bit 


THE GIFTS OF FEODOR HIMKOFF. 207 


ashamed for feeling so little in want of susten- 
ance. 

“Few they be that troubles us, my dear. 
Too few by land, an’ too many by sea, rest their 
dear souls! Step inside by the fire. There’s 
only my old man here, an’ you needn't stand 
‘pon ceremony wi he: for he’s stone-deaf an’ 
totelin’. Isaac, you poor deaf haddock, here’s a 
strange body for ’ee to look at; tho’ you’m past 
all pomp but buryin’, I reckon.” She sighed as 
I stepped past into the warmth. 

The man she called Isaac was huddled and 
nodding in a chair, before the bluish blaze of a 
wreck-wood fire. He met me with an incurious 
stare, and began to doze again. He was clearly 
in the last decline of manhood, the stage of 
utter childishness and mere oblivion; and sat 
there with his faculties collapsed, waiting for 
release. 

My mired boots played havoc with the neatly 
sanded floor; but the old woman dusted a chair 
for me as carefully as if I had worn robes of 
state, and set it on the other side of the hearth. 
Then she put the kettle to boil, and unhitching 


208 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


a cup from the dresser, took a key from it, and 
opened a small cupboard between the fireplace 
and the wall. That which she sought stood on 
the top shelf, and she had to climb on a chair to 
reach it. I offered my help; but no—she would 
get it herself It proved to be a small green 
canister. 

The tea that came from this canister I wish 
I could describe. No sooner did the boiling 
water touch it than the room was filled with 
fragrance. The dotard in the chair drew a long 
breath through his nostrils, as though the aroma 
touched some quick centre in his moribund 
brain. The woman poured out a cup, and I 
sipped it. 

“Smuggled,” I thought to myself; for indeed 
you cannot get such tea in London if you pay 
fifty shillings a pound. 

“You like it?” she asked. Before I could 
answer, a small table stood at my elbow, and she 
was loading it with delicacies from the cupboard. 
The contents of that cupboard! Caviare came 
from it, and a small ambrosial cheese; dried figs 
and guava jelly ; olives, cherries in brandy, won- 


THE GIFTS OF FEODOR HIMKOFF. _ 209 





derful filberts glazed with sugar; biscuits and 
all manner of queer Russian sweets. I leant 





back with wide eyes. 

“ Feodor sends us these,” said the old woman, 
bringing a dish of Cornish cream and a home- 
made loaf to give the feast a basis. 

“ Who's Feodor ?” 

“ Feodor Himkoff.”, She paused a moment, 
and added, “ He’s mate on a Russian vessel.” 

“A friend ?” 

The question went unnoticed. “Is there any 
you fancy ?” she asked. “Some o’t may be out- 
landish eatin’.” 

“Do you like these things?” I looked from 
her to the caviare. 

“JT don’t know. I never tried. We keeps 
"em, my man an’ I, for all poor come-by-chance 
folks that knocks.” 

“ But these are dainties for rich men’s tables.” 

“May be. I’ve never tasted—they’d stick in 
our ozels if we tried.” 

I wanted to ask a dozen questions, but 
thought it politer to accept this strange hos- 
pitality in silence. Glancing up presently, 

0 


210 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


however, I saw her eyes still fixed on me, and 
laid down my knife. 

“T can’t help it,” I said, “I want to know 
about Feodor Himkoff” 

“There’s no secret,’ she answered. “ Least- 
ways, there was one, but either God has con- 
demned or forgiven afore now. Look at my 
man there; he’s done all the repentin’ he’s likely 
to do.” 

After a few seconds’ hesitation she went on— 

“Thad a boy, you must know—oh! astraight 
young man—that went for a soldier, an’ was 
killed at Inkerman by the Rooshians. Take 
another look at his father here; you think ’en a 
bundle o’ frailties, I dessay. Well, when the 
news was brought us, this poor old worm lifts 
his fist up to the sun an’ says, ‘God do so to me 
an’ more also,’ he says, ‘if ever I falls across a 
Rooshian!’ An’ ‘God send me a Rooshian— 
just one!’ he says, meanin’ that Rooshians don’t 
grow on brambles hereabouts. Now the boy was 
our only flesh. | 

“ Well, sir, nigh sixteen year’ went by, an’ we 
two were sittin’, one quakin’ night, beside this 


THE GIFTS OF FEODOR HIMKOFF. 211 


very fire, hearkenin’ to the bedlam outside: for 
‘twas the big storm in Seventy, an’ even indoors 
we must shout to make ourselves heard. About 
ten, as we was thinkin’ to alley-couchey, there 
comes a bangin’ on the door, an’ Isaac gets up 
an’ lets the bar down, singin’ out, ‘ Who is it ?’ 

“There was a big young man ’twixt the door- 
posts, drippin’ wet, wi smears o’ blood on his 
face, an’ white teeth showin’ when he talked. 
"Twas a half-furrin talk, an’ he spoke a bit faint 
too, but fairly grinned for joy to see our warm 
fire—an’ his teeth were white as pearl. 

«<Ah, sir, he cried, ‘you will help? Our 
barque is ashore below—fifteen poor brothers! 
You will send for help ?—you will aid ?’ 

“Then Isaac stepped back, and spoke very 
slow— What nation?’ he asked. ‘She is Russ 
—we are all Russ; sixteen poor brothers from 
Archangel, said the young man, as soon as he 
took in the question. My man slewed round on 
his heel, and walked to the hearth here; but 
the sailor stretched out his hands, an’ I saw the 
middle finger of his right hand was gone. ‘You 
will aid, eh? Ah, yes, you will aid. They are 

02 


212 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





clingin’—so—fifteen poor brothers, and many 
have wives. But Isaac said, ‘Thank Thee, God,’ 
and picked up a log from the hearth here. 
‘Take ’em this message, said he, facin’ round; 
an’, runnin’ on the sailor, who was faint and 
swayin’, beat him forth wi’ the burnin’ stick, and 
bolted the door upon him. 

“After that we sat quiet, he an’ I, all the 
night through, never takin’ our clothes off. An’ 
at daybreak Isaac walked down to the shore. 
There was nothin’ to see but two bodies, an’ he 
buried them an’ waited for more. That evenin’ 
another came in, an’ next day, two; an’ so on for 
a se’nnight. Ten bodies in all he picked up and 
buried 7 the meadow below. An’ on the fourth 
day he picked up a body wi’ one finger missin’, 
under the Nare Head. “Twas the young man he 
had driven forth, who had wandered there an’ 
broke his neck. Isaac buried him too. An’ that 
was all, except two that the coastguard found an’ 
held an inquest over an’ carr’d off to church- 
yard. 

“So it befell; an’ for five year’ neither Isaac 
nor me opened mouth ’pon it, not to each other 


THE GIFTS OF FEODOR HIMEOFF. 213 


even. An’ then, one noonday, a sailor knocks 
at the door; an’ goin’ out, I seed he was a 
furriner, wi great white teeth showin’ dro’ his 
beard. ‘I be come to see Mister Isaac Lenine,’ 
he says, in his outlandish English. So I called 
Tsaac out; an’ the stranger grips ’en by the hand 
an’ kisses ’en, ‘sayin’, ‘ Little father, take me to 
their graves. My name is Feodor Himkoff, an’ 
my brother Dmitry was among the crew of the 
Viatka. You would know his body, if you 
buried it, for the second finger was gone from 
his right hand. I myself—wretched one !— 
chopped it by bad luck when we were boys, an’ 
played at wood cuttin’ wi our father’s axe. I 
have heard how they perished, far from aid, and 
how you gave ’em burial in your own field: and 
I pray to all the saints for you,’ he says. 

“So Isaac led ’en to the field and showed ’en 
the grave that was staked off’long wi’ the rest. 
God help my poor man! he was too big a coward 
to speak. So the man stayed wi’ us till sun- 
down, an’ kissed us ’pon both cheeks, an’ went 
his way, blessin’ us. God forgi’e us—God forgi’e 
us ! 


214 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“ An’ ever since he’s been breaking our heads 
dro’ the post-office wi such-like precious balms 
as these here.” She broke off to settle Isaac 
more comfortably in his chair. “’Tis all we can 
do to get rid of’em on poor trampin’ fellows 
same as yourself,” 


YORKSHIRE DICK, 


“SEE here, you'd best lose the bitch—till to- 
morrow, anyway. She ain’t the sight to please a 
strict man, like your dad, on the Sabbath day. 
What’s more, she won’t heal for a fortni’t, not to 
deceive a Croolty-to-Animals Inspector at fifty 
yards; an’ with any man but me she'll take a 
month.” 

My friend Yorkshire Dick said this, with that 
curious gypsy intonation that turns English into 
a foreign tongue if you forget the words and 
listen only to the voice. He was squatting in | 
the sunshine, with his back against an oak 
sapling, a black cutty under his nose, and Meg, 
my small fox-terrier, between his thighs. In 
those days, being just fifteen, I,had taken a 
sketch-book and put myself to school under 
Dick to learn the lore of Things As They Are: 
and, as part of the course, we had been the 
death of a badger that morning—Sunday morn- 


ing. 


216 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


— 


It was one of those days in autumn when the 
dews linger in the shade till noon and the black- 
berry grows too watery for the connoisseur. On 
the ridge where we loafed, the short turf was 
dry enough, and the sun strong between the 
sparse saplings; but the paths that zigzagged 
down the thick coppice to right and left were 
soft to the foot, and streaked with the slimy 
tracks of snails. A fine blue mist filled the 
gulf on either hand, and beneath it mingled the 
voices of streams and of birds busy beside them. 
At the mouth of each valley a thicker column of 
blue smoke curled up like a feather—that to the 
left rising from the kitchen chimney of my 
father’s cottage, that to the right from the en- 
campment where Dick’s bousllon was simmering 
above a wood fire. 

Looking over Dick’s shoulder along the ridge 
I could see, at a point where the two valleys 
climbed to the upland, a white-washed building, 
set alone, and backed by an undulating moor- 
land dotted with clay-works. This was Ebenezer 
Chapel; and my father was its deacon. Its one 
bell had sounded down the ridge and tinkled in 


‘—~ i 


YORKSHIRE DICK. 217 


my ear from half-past ten to eleven that morn- 
ing. Its pastor would walk back and eat roast 
duck and drink three-star brandy under my 
father’s roof after service. Bell and pastor had 
spoken in vain, as far as I was concerned ; but I 
knew that all they had to say would be rubbed 
in with my father’s stirrup-leather before night- 
fall. 

“Tis pretty sport,” said Dick, “but it leaves 
traces.” 

Between us the thin red soil of the ridge was 
heaped in mounds, and its stain streaked our 
clothes and faces. On one of these mounds lay 
a spade and two picks, a pair of tongs, an old 
sack, dyed in its original service of holding 
sheep’s reddle, and, on the sack, the carcase of 
our badger, its grey hairs messed with blood 
about the snout. This carcase was a matter of 
study not only to me, who had my sketch-book 
out, but to a couple of Dick’s terriers tied up to 
a sapling close by—an ugly mongrel, half fox— 
half bull-terrier, and a Dandie Dinmont—who 
were straining to get at it. As for Dick, he 
never lifted his eyes, but went on handling Meg. 


218 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


He had the gypsy’s secret with animals, and the 
poor little bitch hardly winced under his touch, 
though her under-lip was torn away, and hung, 
like a red rag, by half an inch of flesh. 


We had dug and listened and dug again for 
our badger, all the morning. Then Dick sent his 
mongrel in at the hole, and the mongrel had 
come forth like a projectile and sat down at a 
distance, bewailing his lot. After him the 
Dandie went in and sneaked out again with a 
fore-paw bitten to the bone. And at last Meg 
stepped in grimly, and stayed. For a time 
there was dead silence, and then as we pressea 
yur ears against the turf and the violets, that 
were just beginning their autumnal flowering, we 
heard a scufiling underground and began to dig 
down to it, till the sweat streamed into our eyes. 
Now Dick’s wife had helped us to bring up the 
tools, and hung around to watch the sport—an 
ugly, apathetic woman, with hair like a horse’s 
tail bound in a yellow rag, a man’s hips, and a 
skirt of old sacking. I think there was no love 
lost between her and Dick, because she had 


YORKSHIRE DICK. 219 


borne him no children. Anyway, while Dick 
and I were busy, digging like niggers and listen- 
ing like Indians—for Meg didn’t bark, not being 
trained to the work, and all we could hear was 
wa uvud, thud now and then, and the hard breath- 
ing of the grapple—all of a sudden the old hag 
spoke, for the first time that day— 

“S'trewth, but I’ve gripped !” 

Looking up, I saw her stretched along the 
side of the turf, with her head resting on the 
lip of the badger’s hole and her right arm inside, 
up to the arm-pit. Without speaking again, she 
began to work her body back, like a snake, the 
muscles swelling and sinking from shoulder to 
flank in small waves. She had the strength of a 
horse. Inch by inch she pulled back, while we 
dug around the mouth of the hole, filling her 
mouth and eyes with dirt, until her arm came to 
light, then the tongs she held; and then Dick 
spat out a mighty oath— 

“Tt’s the dog she’s got!” 

So it was. The woman had hold of Meg all 
the time, and the game little brute had held on 
to the badger. Also the badger had held her, 


220 . NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


and when at last his hold slipped, she was a 
sruesome sight. She looked round, reproach- 
fully, shook the earth out of her eyes and went 
in again without a sound. And Dick picked up 
a clod and threw it in his wife’s face, between the 
eyes. She cursed him, in a perfunctory way, and 
walked off, down the wood, to look after her 
stew. 

But now, Meg having pinned her enemy 
again, we soon dug them out: and I held the 
sack while Dick took the badger by the tail and 
dropped him in. His teeth snapped, a bare two 
inches from my left hand, as he fell. After a 
short rest, he was despatched. The method 
need not be described. It was somewhat crude, 
and in fact turned me not a little sick. 


“One o'clock,” Dick observed, glancing up 
at the sun, and resuming his care of Meg. 
“What're ye trying to do, youngster ?” 

“Trying to put on paper what a badger’s like 
when he’s dead. If only I had colours——” 

“ My son, there’s a kind of man afflicted with 
an itch to put all he sees on paper. What's the 


YORKSHIRE DICK. 221 


use? Fifty men might sit down and write what 
the grey of a badger’s like; and they can’t, be- 
cause there’s no words for it. All they can say 
is that ’tis badger’s-grey—which means nought 
to a man that hasn’t seen one; and a man that 
has don’t want to be told. Same with your 
pencils and paints. Cast your head back and 
look up—how deep can you see into the sky ?” 

“ Miles.” 

“ Ay, and every mile shining to the eye. I’ve 
seen pictures in my time, but never one that 
made a dab of paint look a mile deep. Besides, 
why draw a thing when you can lie on your back 
and look up at it ?” 

I was about to answer when Dick raised his 
head, with a queer alertness in his eyes. Then 
he vented a long, low whistle, and went on bind- 
ing up Meg’s jaw. 

Immediately after, there was a crackling of 
boughs to the left and my father’s head appeared 
above the slope, with the red face of the pastor 
behind it. We were caught. 

On the harangue that followed I have no 
wish to dwell. My father and the pastor pitched 


222 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


it in by turns, while Dick went on with his 
surgery, his mouth pursed up for a soundless 
whistle. The prosecution had it all its own 
way, and I felt uncomfortably sure about the 
sentence. 

But at last, to our amazement, Dick, having 
finished the bandaging, let Meg go and advanced. 
He picked up my sketch-book. 

“Gentlemen both,” said he, “I’ve been listen- 
ing respectful to your talk about God and his 
wrath, and as a poor heathen I’d like to know 
your idea of him. MHere’s a pencil and paper. 
Will you be kind enough to draw God? that I 
may see what he’s like.” 

The pastor's jaw dropped. My father went 
grey with rage. Dick stood a pace back, smiling; 
and the sun glanced on the gold rings in his 
ears. 

“No, sirs. It ain’t blasphemy. But I know 
you can’t give me a notion that won’t make 
him out to be a sort of man, pretty much like 
yourselves—two eyes, a nose, mouth, and beard 
perhaps. Now my wife says there’s points about 
a woman that you don’t reckon into your notion; 


ee 


YORKSHIRE DICK, 223 


and my dog says there’s more in a tail than 


9 





most men estimate 
“You foul-tongued poacher 


33 


broke out 





my father. 

“ Now youre mixing matters up,” Dick inter- 
rupted, blandly; “I poach, and that’s a crime. 
Ive shown your boy to-day how men kill 
badgers, and maybe that’s wrong. But look 
here, sir—I’ve taught him some things besides ; 
the ways of birds and beasts, and their calls; 
how to tell the hour by sun and stars; how to 
know an ash from a beech, of a pitch-dark night, 
by the sound of the wind in their tops; what 
herbs will cure disease and where to seek them ; 
why some birds hop and others run. Sirs, I 
come of an old race that has outlived. books 
and pictures and meeting-houses: you belong to 
a new one and a cock-sure, and maybe you're 
right. Anyhow, you know precious little of this 
world, whatever you may of another.” 

He stopped, pushed a hand through his 
coarse black hair, and, as if suddenly tired, re- 
sumed the old, sidelong gypsy look that he had 
been straightening with an effort. 


224 NOUGATS AND CROSSES. 


“Your boy’ll believe what you tell him: he’s 
got the strength in his blood. Take him home 
and don’t beat him too hard.” 

He glanced at me with a light nod, untied 
his dogs, shouldered his tools, and slouched 
away down the path, to sleep under his accus- 
tomed tree that night and be off again, next day, 
travelling amongst men and watching them with 


his weary ironical smile, 


THE CAROL 


I was fourteen that Christmas:—all Veryan 
parish knows the date of the famous “ Black 
Winter,” when the Johann brig came ashore on 
Kibberick beach, with a dozen foreigners frozen 
stiff and staring on her fore-top, and Lawyer Job, 
up at Ruan, lost all his lambs but two. There 
was neither rhyme nor wit in the season; and 
up to St. Thomas’s eve, when it first started to 
freeze, the folk were thinking that summer 
meant to run straight into spring. I mind the 
ash being in leaf on Advent Sunday, and a 
crowd of martins skimming round the church 
windows during sermon-time. Hach morning 
brought blue sky, warm mists, and a dew that 
hung on the brambles till ten o'clock. The 
frogs were spawning in the pools; primroses 
were out by scores, and monthly roses blooming 
still; and Master shot a goat-sucker on the last 
day in November. All this puzzled the sheep, I 


suppose, and gave them a notion that their time, 
P 


226 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


too, was at hand. At any rate the lambs fell 
early; and when they fell, it had turned to 
perishing cold. 

That Christmas-eve, while the singers were 
up at the house and the fiddles going like mad, 
it was a dismal time for two of us. Laban 
Pascoe, the hind, spent his night in the upper 
field where the sheep lay, while I spent mine in 
the chall* looking after Dinah, our Alderney, 
that had slipped her calf in the afternoon— 
being promised the castling’s skin for a Sunday 
waistcoat, if I took care of the mother. Bating 
the cold air that came under the door, I kept 
pretty cosy, what with the straw-bands round my 
legs and the warm breath of the cows: for we 
kept five. There was no wind outside, but 
moonlight and a still, frozen sky, like a sound- 
ing board: so that every note of the music 
reached me, with the bleat of Laban’s sheep far 
up the hill, and the waves’ wash on the beaches 
below. Inside the chall the only sounds were 
the slow chewing of the cows, the rattle of a 
tethering-block, now and then, or a moan from 


* Cow-house. 


THE CAROL, 227 


— 


Dinah. Twice the uproar from the house coaxed 
me to the door to have a look at Laban’s scarlet 
lantern moving above, and make sure that he 
was worse off than I. But mostly I lay still on 
my straw in the one empty stall staring into the 
fogey face of my own lantern, thinking of the 
waistcoat, and listening. 

I was dozing, belike, when a light tap on the 
door made me start up, rubbing my eyes. 

“Merry Christmas, Dick !” 

A. little head, bright with tumbled curls, was 
thrust in, and a pair of round eyes stared round 
the chall, then back to me, and rested on my 
face. 

“ Merry Christmas, little mistress.” 

“Dick—if you tell, Pll never speak to you 
again. I only wanted to see if twas true.” 

She stepped inside the chall, shutting the 
door behind her. Under one arm she hugged 
a big boy-doll, dressed like a sailor—from the 
Christmas-tree, | guessed—and a bright tinsel 
star was pinned on the shoulder of her bodice. 
She had come across the cold town-place in her 


muslin frock, with no covering for her shoulders; 
P 2 | 


228 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 





and the manner in which that frock was hitched 
upon her made me stare. 

“T got out of bed again and dressed myself,” 
she explained. “Nurse is in the kitchen, danc- 
ing with the young man from Penare, who can’t 
afford to marry her for ever so long, father says. 


39 


I saw them twirling, as I slipped out 





“You have done a wrong thing,” said I: 
“you might catch your death.” 

Her lip fell:—she was but five. “Dick, I 
only wanted to see if ’twas true.” 

“What?” I asked, covering her shoulders 
with the empty sack that had been my pillow. 

“Why, that the cows pray on Christmas-eve. 
Nurse says that at twelve o’clock to-night all the 
cows in their stalls will be on their knees, if only 
somebody is there to see. So, as it’s near twelve 
by the tall clock indoors, ’'ve come to see,” she 
wound up. 

“It’s quig-nogs, I expect. I never heard of 
it.” 

“Nurse says they kneel and make a cruel 
moan, like any Christian folk. It’s because 
Christ was born in a stable, and so the cows 


THE CAROL, 229 


know all about it. Listen to Dinah! Dick. 
she’s going to begin!” 

But Dinah, having heaved her moan, merely 
shuddered and was still again. 

“Just fancy, Dick,” the little one went on, 
“it happened in a chall like ours!” She was 
quiet for a moment, her eyes fixed on the glossy 
rumps of the cows. Then, turning quickly—‘«I 
know about it, and [ll show you. Dick, you 
must be Saint Joseph, and I'll be the Virgin 
Mary. Wait a bi 4 

Her quick fingers began to undress the 
sailor-doll and fold his clothes carefully. “I 
meant to christen him Robinson Crusoe,’ she 
explained, as she laid the small garments, one 
by one, on the straw; “ but he can’t be Robinson 
Crusoe till I’ve dressed him up again.” The 
doll was stark naked now, with waxen face and 





shoulders, and bulging bags of sawdust for body 
and legs. 

“Dick,” she said, folding the doll in her arms 
and kissing it—“St. Joseph, I mean—the first 
thing we've got to do is to let people know he’s 
born. Sing that carol I heard you trying over 


230 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


last week—the one that says ‘Far and far I 


carry it. 
So I sang, while she rocked the babe :— 


“* Naked boy, brown boy, 
In the snow deep, 
Piping, carolling 
Folks out of sleep ; 
Inttle shoes, thin shoes, 
Shoes so wet and worn ’— 
‘But I bring the merry news 
—Christ is born ! 


Rise, pretty mistress, 

In your smock of silk ; 
Give me for my good news 
Bread and new milk. 

Joy, joy in Jewry, 
This very morn! 
Far and far I carry «ut 


> 93 
! 


—Christ is born 


She heard me with a grave face to the end; 
then pulling a handful of straw, spread it in the 
empty manger and laid the doll there. No, I 
forget; one moment she held it close to her 


THE CAROL, 231 


breast and looked down on it. The God who 
fashions children can tell where she learnt that 
look, and why I remembered it ten years later, 
when they let me look into the room where she 
lay with another babe in her clay-cold arms. 
“Count forty,” she went on, using the very 
words of Pretty Tommy, our parish clerk; 
“count forty, and let fly with ‘Now draw 


9 33 


around 





“ Now draw around, good Christian men, 
And rest you worship-ping—” 


We sang the carol softly together, she resting 
one hand on the edge of the manger. 

“Dick, ain’t you proud of him? I don’t see 
the spiders beginning, though.” 

“ The spiders ?” 

“Dick, youre very ig-norant. Lverybody 
knows that, when Christ was laid in a manger, 
the spiders came and spun their webs over Him 
and hid Him. That's why King Herod couldn’t 
find Him.” i 

“There, now! We live and learn,” said I. 

“Well, now there's nothing to do but sit 


232 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


down and wait for the wise men and the 
shepherds.” 

It was a little while that she watched, being 
long over-tired. The warm air of the chall 
weighed on her eyelids ; and, as they closed, her 
head sank on my shoulder. For ten minutes I sat, 
listening to her breathing. Dinah rose heavily 
from her bed and lay down again, with a long 
sigh; another cow woke up and rattled her rope a 
dozen times through its ring; up at the house 
the fiddling grew more furious; but the little 
maid slept on. At last I wrapped the sack 
closely round her, and lifting her in my arms, 
carried her out into the night. She was my 
master’s daughter, and I had not the courage to 
kiss so much as her hair. Yet I had no envy 
for the dancers, then. 

As we passed into the cold air she stirred. 

“Did they come? And where are you carry- 
ing me?” Then, when I told her, “Dick, I will 
never speak to you again, if you don’t carry me 
first to the gate of the upper field.” 

So I carried her to the gate, and sitting up 
in my arms she called twice, 


THE CAROL. 233 


“ Laban—Laban !” 

“What cheer—O?” the hind called back. 
His lantern was a spark on the hill-side, and he 
could not tell the voice at that distance. 

“Have you seen him ?” 

“ Wha-a-a-t ?” 

“The angel of the Lo-o-ord !” 

« Wha-a-a-t ?” 

“Tm afraid we can’t make him understand,” 
she whispered. “Hush; don’t shout!” For a 
moment, she seemed to consider; and then her 
shrill treble quavered out on the frosty air, my 
own deeper voice taking up the second line— 


“ The first ‘ Nowell’ the angel did say 
Was to certain poor shepherds, wn fields as 
they lay, 
—In fields as they lay, a-tending thevr sheep, 
On a cold winter's night that was so deep— 
Nowell! Nowell! 
Christ is born in Israel !” 


Our voices followed our shadows across the 
gate and far up the field, where Laban’s sheep 
- lay dotted. What Laban thought of it I cannot 


234 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


—— 


tell: but to me it seemed, for the moment, that 
the shepherd among his ewes, the dancers 
within the house, the sea beneath us, and the 
stars in their courses overhead moved all to 


one tune,—the carol of two children on the 
hill-side. 


THE PARADISE OF CHOICE. 


IT was not as in certain toy houses that foretell 
the weather by means of a man-doll and a 
woman-doll—the man going in as the woman 
comes out, and vice versd. In this case both 
man and woman stepped out, the man half a 
minute behind; so that the woman was almost 
at the street-corner while he hesitated just out- 
side the door, blinking up at the sky, and then 
dropping his gaze along the pavement. 

The sky was flattened by a fog that shut 
down on the roofs and chimneys like a tent- 
cloth, white and opaque. Now and then a 
yellowish wave rolled across it from eastward, 
and the cloth would be shaken. When this 
happened, the street was always filled with 
gloom, and the receding figure of the woman 
lost in it for a while. 

The man thrust a hand into his trousers 
pocket, pulled out a penny, and after consider- 
ing for a couple of seconds, spun it carelessly. 


236 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


It fell in his palm, tail up; and he regarded it 
as a sailor might a compass. The trident in 
Britannia’s hand pointed westward, down the 
street. 

“ West it is,” he decided with a shrug, imply- 
ing that all the four quarters were equally to his 
mind. He was pocketing the coin, when foot- 
steps approached, and he lifted his head. It 
was the woman returning. She halted close to 
him with an undecided manner, and the pair 
eyed each other. 

We may know them as Adam and Eve, for 
both were beginning a world that contained 
neither friends nor kin. Both had very white 
hands and very short hair. The man was tall 
and meagre, with a receding forehead and a 
sandy complexion that should have been 
freckled, but was not. He had a trick of half- 
closing his eyes when he looked at anything, 
not screwing them up as seamen do, but appear- 
ing rather to drop a film over them like the 
inner eyelid of a bird. The woman’s eyes re- 
sembled a hare’s, being brown and big, and set 
far back, so that she seemed at times to be 


THE PARADISE OF CHOICE. 237 


oe ——— 


looking right behind her. She wore a faded 
look, from her dust-coloured hair to her boots, 
which wanted blacking. 

“Tt all seems so wide,’ she began; “so 
wide——” 





“Tm going west,” said the man, and started 
at a slow walk. Eve followed, a pace behind his 
heels, treading almost in his tracks) He went 
on, taking no notice of her. 

“How long were you in there?” she asked, 
after a while. 

“Ten year.” Adam spoke without looking 
back. “ ’Cumulated jobs, you know.” 

“T was only two. Blankets it was with me. 
They recommended me to mercy.” 

“You got it,’ Adam commented, with his 
eyes fastened ahead. 

The fog followed them as they turned into a 
street full of traffic. Its frayed edge rose and 
sank, was parted and joined again—now descend- 
ing to the first-storey windows and blotting out 
the cabmen and passengers on omnibus tops, 
now rolling up and over the parapets of the 
houses and the sky-signs. It was noticeable that 


238 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


in the crowd that hustled along the pavement 
Adam moved like a puppy not yet waywise, but 
with lifted face, while Eve followed with her 
head bent, seeing nothing but his heels. She 
observed that his boots were hardly worn at all. 

Three or four times, as they went along, 
Adam would eye a shop window and turn in at 
the door, while Eve waited. He returned from 
different excursions with a twopenny loaf, a red 
sausage, a pipe, box of lights and screw of 
tobacco, and a noggin or so of gin in an old 
soda-water bottle. Once they turned aside into 
a public, and had a drink of gin together. Adam 
paid. 

Thus for two hours they plodded westward, 
and the fog and crowd were with them all the 
way—strangers jostling them by the shoulder 
on the greasy pavement, hansoms splashing the 
brown mud over them—the same din for miles. 
Many shops were lighting up, and from these a 
yellow flare streamed into the fog; or a white 
when it came from the electric light ; or separate 
beams of orange, green, and violet, when the 
shop was a druggist’s. 


THE PARADISE OF CHOICE. 239 


Then they came to the railings of Hyde 
Park, and trudged down the hill alongside them 
to Kensington Gardens. It was yet early in the 
afternoon. Adam pulled up. 

“Come and look,” he said. “It’s autumn in 
there,” and he went in at the Victoria gate, with 
Ive at his heels. 

“ Mister, how old might you be?” she asked, 
encouraged by the sound of his voice. 

“Thirty.” 

“And you've passed ten years in—in there.” 
She jerked her head back and shivered a little. 

He had stooped to pick up a leaf. It was a 
yellow leaf from a chestnut that reached into 
the fog above them. He picked it slowly to 
pieces, drawing full draughts of air into his 
lungs. “Fifteen,” he jerked out, “one time and 
another. ’Cumulated, you know.” Pausing, he 
added, in a matter-of-fact voice, “What I’ve 
took would come to less ’n a pound’s worth, 
altogether.” 

The Gardens were deserted, and the pair 
roamed towards the centre, gazing curiously at 
so much of sodden vegetation as the fog allowed 


240 NOUGHT® AND CROSSES, 


them to see. Their eyes were not jaded; to 
them a blade of grass was not a little thing. 

They were down on the south side, amid the 
heterogeneous plants there collected, examining 
each leaf, spelling the Latin labels and compar- 
ing them, when the hour came for closing. In 
the dense atmosphere the park-keeper missed 
them. The gates were shut; and the fog settled 
down thicker with the darkness. 

Then the man and the woman were aware, 
and grew afraid. They saw only a limitless 
plain of grey about them, and heard a murmur 
as of the sea rolling around it. 

“This gaol is too big,” whispered Eve, and 
they took hands. The man trembled. Together 
they moved into the fog, seeking an outlet. 


At the end of an hour or so they stumbled 
on a seat, and sat down for awhile to share the 
bread and sausage, and drink the gin. Eve was 
tired out and would have slept, but the man 
shook her by the shoulder. 

“For God’s sake don’t leave me to face this 
alone. Can you sing?” 


THE PARADISE OF CHOICE. 241 


rs 


She began “ When other lups ... 
whisper which gradually developed into a reedy | 
soprano. She had forgotten half the words, but - 
Adam lit a pipe and listened appreciatively. 

“Tell you what,” he said at the close ; “ you’ll 
be able to pick up a little on the road with your 
singing, We'll tramp west to-morrow, and pass 
ourselves off for man and wife. Likely we'll get 
some farm work, down in the country. Let’s 


»”? 


in a 


get out of this.” 

They joined hands and started off again, 
unable to see a foot before them in the black- 
ness. So it happened next morning that the 
park-keeper, coming at his usual hour to unlock 
the gates, found a man and a woman inside with 
their white faces pressed against the railings, 
through which they glared like caged beasts. 
He set them free, and they ran out, for his 
paradise was too big. 


Now, facing west, they tramped for two days 
on the Bath road, leaving the fog behind them, 
and drew near Reading. It was a clear night as 
they approacned it, and the sky studded with 

Q 


242 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


stars that twinkled frostily. Eleven o'clock 
sounded from a tower ahead. On the outskirts 
of the town they were passing an ugly modern 
villa with a large garden before it, when an old 
gentleman came briskly up the road and turned 
in at the gate. 

Adam swung round on his heel and followed 
him up the path, begging. Eve hung by the gate. 

“No,” said the old gentleman, fitting his 
latchkey into the door, “I have no work to 
offer. Eh?—Is that your wife by the gate? 
Hungry ?” 

Adam whispered a lie in his ear. 

“ Poor woman, and to be on the road, in 
such a state, at this hour! Well, you shall 
share my supper before you search for a lodging. 
Come inside,” he called out to Eve, “and be 
careful of the step. It’s a high one.” 

He led them in, past the ground-floor rooms 
and up a flight of stairs. After pausing on the 
landing and waiting a long time for Eve to take 
breath, he began to ascend another flight. 

“Are we going to have supper on the 
leads ?” Adam wondered. 


THE PARADISE OF CHOICE. 243 


They followed the old gentleman up to the 
attics and into a kind of tower, where was a 
small room with two tables spread, the one with 
a supper, the other with papers, charts, and 
mathematical instruments. 

“Here,” said their guide, “is bread, a cold 
chicken, and a bottle of whisky. I beg you to 
excuse me while you eat. The fact is, I dabble 
in astronomy. My telescope is on the roof 
above, and to-night every moment is precious.” 

There was a ladder fixed in the room, lead- 
ing toa trap-door in the ceiling. Up this ladder 
the old gentleman trotted, and in half a minute 
had disappeared, shutting the trap behind him. 

It was half an hour or more before Adam 
climbed after him, with Eve, as usual, at his 
heels. 

“My dear madam!” cried the astronomer, 
“and in your state !” 

“T told you a lie,” Adam said. “I’ve come 
to beg your pardon. May we look at the stars 
before we go?” 

In two minutes the old gentleman was point- 
ing out the constellations—the Great Bear 

Q2 


244 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


hanging low in the north-east, pointing to the 
Pole star, and across it to Cassiopeia’s bright zig- 
zag high in the heavens; the barren square of 
Pegasus, with its long tail stretching to the 
Milky Way, and the points that cluster round 
Perseus ; Arcturus, white Vega and yellow Ca- 
pella; the Twins, and beyond them the Little 
Dog twinkling through a coppice of naked trees to 
eastward ; yet further round the Pleiads climb- 
ing, with red Aldebaran after them ; below them 
Orion’s belt, and last of all, Sirius flashing like 
a diamond, white and red, and resting on the 
horizon where the dark pasture lands met the sky. 

Then, growing flushed with his subject, he 
began to descant on these stars, their distances 
and velocities ; how that each was a sun, career- 
ing in measureless space, each trailing a company 
of worlds that spun and hurtled round it; that 
the Dog-star’s light shone into their eyes across 
a hundred trillion miles; that the star itself 
swept along a thousand miles in a minute. He 
hurled figures at them, heaping millions on 
millions. “See here”—and, turning the tele- 
scope on its pivot, he sighted it carefully. 


THE PARADISE OF CHOICE. 245 


“Look at that small star in the Great Bear: 
that’s Groombridge Highteen-thirty. He’s two 
hundred billions of miles away. He travels two 
hundred miles a second, does Groombridge 
Highteen-thirty. In one minute Groombridge 
Highteen-thirty could go from here to Hong- 
Kong.” 

“Then damn Groombridge Highteen-thirty !” 

It was uttered in the bated tone that night 
enforces: but it came with a groan. The old 
gentleman faced round in amazement. 

“He means, sir,” explained the woman, who 
had grown to understand Adam passing well, 
“my man means that it’s all too big for us. 
We've strayed out of prison, sir, and shall feel 
safer back again, looking at all this behind bars.” 


She reached out a hand to Adam: and this 
time it was he that followed, as one blinded 
and afraid. In three months they were back 
again at the gates of the paradise they had 
wandered from. There stood a warder before it, 
clad in blue: but he carried no flaming sword, 
and the door opened and let them in. 


4 





ain? ey 
File At at 


BESIDE THE BEE-HIVES. 


On the outskirts of the village of Gantick stand 
two small semi-detached cottages, coloured with 
the same pale yellow wash, their front gardens 
descending to the high-road in parallel lines, 
their back gardens (which are somewhat longer) 
climbing to a little wood of secular elms, tradi- 
tionally asserted to be the remnant of a mighty 
forest. The party hedge is heightened by a 
thick screen of white-thorn on which the buds 
were just showing pink when I took up my 
lodging in the left-hand cottage (the 10th of 
May by my diary); and at the end of it are two 
small arbours, set back to back, their dilapidated 
sides and roofs bound together by clematis. 

The night of my arrival, my landlady asked 
me to make the least possible noise in unpacking 
my portmanteau, because there was trouble next 
door, and the partitions were thin. Our neigh- 
bour’s wife was down with inflammation, she ex- 
plained—inflammation of the lungs, as I learnt 


248 NOUGATS AND CROSSES. 


by a question or two. It was a bad case. She 
was a wisht, ailing soul to begin with. Also the 
owls in the wood above had been hooting loudly, 
for nights past: and yesterday a hedge-sparrow 
lit on the sill of the sick-room window, two sure 
tokens of approaching death. The sick woman 
was being nursed by her elder sister, who had 
lived in the house for two years, and practically 
taken charge of it. ‘“ Better the man had married 
she,’ my landlady added, somewhat unfeelingly. 
I saw the man in his garden early next 
morning: a tall fellow, hardly yet on the wrong 
side of thirty, dressed in loose-fitting tweed coat 
and corduroys. A row of bee-hives stood along 
his side of the party wall, and he had taken the 
farthest one, which was empty, off its stand, and 
was rubbing it on the inside with a handful of 
elder-flower buds, by way of preparation for a 
new swarm. Even from my bed-room window I 
remarked, as he turned his head occasionally, 
that he was singularly handsome. His move- 
ments were those of a lazy man in a hurry, 
though there seemed no reason for hurry in his 
task. But when it was done, and the hive re- 


BESIDE THE BEE-HIVES. 249 





placed, his behaviour began to be so eccentric 
that I paused in the midst of my shaving, to 
watch. 

He passed slowly down the line of bee-hives, 
halting beside each in turn, and bending his 
head down close to the orifice with the exact 
action of a man whispering a secret into another’s 
ear. I believe he kept this attitude for a couple 
of minutes beside each hive—there were eight, 
besides the empty one. At the end of the row 
he lifted his head, straightened his shoulders, 
and cast a glance up at my window, where I 
kept well out of sight. A minute after, he 
entered his house by the back door, and did not 
reappear. 

At breakfast I asked my landlady if our 
neighbour were wrong in his head at all. She 
looked astonished, and answered, “No: he wasa 
do-nothing fellow—unless you counted it hard 
work to drive a carrier’s van thrice a week into 
Tregarrick, and home the same night. But he 
kept very steady, and had a name for good 
nature.” 

Next day the man was in his garden at the 


250 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


same hour, and repeated the performance. 
Throughout the following night I was kept 
awake by a series of monotonous groans that 
reached me through the partition, and the 
murmur of voices speaking at intervals. It was 
horrible to lie within a few inches of the sick 
woman’s head, to listen to her agony and be 
unable to help, unable even to see. Towards six 
in the morning, in bright daylight, I dropped off 
to sleep at last. 

Two hours later the sound of voices came 
in at the open window and awoke me. I 
looked out into my neighbour’s garden. He 
was standing, half-way up the path, in the 
sunshine, and engaged in a suppressed but 
furious altercation with a thin woman, some- 
what above middle height. Both wore thick 
ereen veils over their faces and thick gloves on 
their hands. The woman carried a rusty tea- 
tray. 

The man stood against her, motioning her 
back towards the house. I caught a sentence— 
“Ttll be the death of her;” and the woman 
glanced back over her shoulder towards the 





BESIDE THE BEE-HIVES. 251 


window of the sick-room. She seemed about 
to reply, but shruggea her shoulders instead 
and went back into the house, carrying her tray. 
The man turned on his heel, walked hurriedly 
up the garden, and scrambled over its hedge 
into the wood. His veil and thick gloves were 
explained a couple of hours later, when I looked 
into the garden again and saw him hiving a 
swarm of bees that he had captured, the first 
of the season. 

That same afternoon, about four o’clock, I 
observed that every window in the next house 
stood wide open. My landlady was out in the 
garden, “ picking in” her week’s washing from 
the thorn hedge where it had been suspended 
to dry; and I called her attention to this new 
freak of our neighbours. 

“Ah, then, the poor soul must be nigh to 
her end,” said she. “That’s done to give her 
an easy death.” 

The woman died at half-past seven. And 
next morning her husband hung a scrap of 
black crape to each of the bee-hives. 

She was buried on Sunday afternoon. From 


252 NOUGATS AND CROSSES. 


behind the drawn blinds of my sitting-room 
window I saw the funeral leave the house and 
move down the front garden to the high-road 
—the heads of the mourners, each with a white 
handkerchief pressed to its nose, appearing 
above the wall like the top of a procession in 
some Assyrian sculpture. The husband wore a 
ridiculously tall hat, and a hat-band with long 
tails. The whole affair had the appearance of 
an hysterical outrage on the afternoon sun- 
shine. At the foot of the garden they struck 
up a “burying tune,” and passed down the road, 
shouting it with all their lungs. 

I caught up a book and rushed out into the 
back garden for fresh air. Even out of doors it 
was insufferably hot, and soon I flung myself 
down on the bench within the arbour and set 
myself to read. A plank behind me had started, 
and after a while the edge of it began to gall my 
shoulders as I leant back. I tried once or twice 
to push it into its place, without success, and 
then, in a moment of irritation, gave it a tug. 
[t came away in my hand, and something rolled 
out on the bench before me, and broke in two. 


BESIDE THE BEE-HiVES. 253 


I picked it up. It was a lump of dough, 
rudely moulded to the shape of a woman, with 
a rusty brass-headed nail stuck through the 
breast. Around the body was tied a lock of 
fine light-brown hair—-a woman’s, by its length. 

After a careful examination, I untied the 
lock of hair, put the doll back in its place 
behind the plank, and returned to the house: 
for I had a question or two to put to my 
landlady. 

“Was the dead woman at all like her elder 
sister?” I asked. “Was she black-haired, for 
instance ?” 

“No,” answered my landlady; “she was 
shorter and much fairer. You might almost 
call her a light-haired woman.” 

I hoped she would pardon me for changing 
the subject abruptly and asking an apparently 
ridiculous question, but would she call a man 
mad if she found him whispering secrets into 
a bee-hive ? 

My landlady promptly replied that, on the 
contrary, she would think him extremely sen- 
sible; for that, unless bees were told of all that 


254 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


was happening in the household to which they 
belonged, they might consider themselves neg- 
lected, and leave the place in wrath. She 
asserted this to be a notorious fact. 

“TI have one more question,” I said. “Sup- 
pose that you found in your garden a lock of 
hair—a lock such as this, for instance—what 
would you do with it?” 

She looked at it, and caught her breath 
sharply. 

“Tm no meddler,” she said at last; “I 
should burn it.” 

cc Why 2 9 

“ Because if ’twas left about, the birds might 
use it for their nests, and weave it in so tight 
that the owner couldn’t rise on Judgment day.” 

So I burnt the lock of hair in her presence; 
because I wanted its owner to rise on Judgment 
day and state a case which, after all, was no 
affair of mine, 


THE MAGIC SHADOW. 


ONCE upon a time there was born a man-child 
with a magic shadow. 

His case was so rare that a number of 
doctors have been disputing over it ever since 
and picking his parents’ histories and genealogies 
to bits, to find the cause. Their inquiries do 
not help us much. The father drove a cab; the 
mother was a charwoman and came of a con- 
sumptive family. But these facts will not quite 
account for a magic shadow. The birth took 
place on the night of a new moon, down a 
narrow alley into which neither moon nor sun 
ever penetrated beyond the third-storey windows 
—and that is why the parents were so long in 
discovering their child’s miraculous gift. The 
hospital-student who attended merely remarked 
that the babe was small and sickly, and advised 
the mother to drink sound port-wine while 
nursing him,—which she could not afford. 

Nevertheless, the boy struggled somehow 


256 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


through five years of life, and was put into small- 
clothes. Two weeks after this promotion his 
mother started off to scrub out a big house in 
the fashionable quarter, and took him with her: 
for the house possessed a wide garden, laid with 
turf and lined with espaliers, sunflowers, and 
hollyhocks, and as the month was August, and 
the family away in Scotland, there seemed no 
harm in lettmmg the child run about in this 
paradise while she worked. A flight of steps 
descended from the drawing-room to the garden, 
and as she knelt on her mat in the cool room 
it was easy to keep an eye on him. Now 
and then she gazed out into the sunshine and 
called; and the boy stopped running about and 
nodded back, or shouted the report of some 
fresh discovery. 

By-and-by a sulphur butterfly excited him 
so that he must run up the broad stone steps 
with the news. The woman laughed, looking at 
his flushed face, then down at his shoe-strings, 
which were untied: and then she jumped up, 
crying out sharply—*“Stand still, child—stand 
still a moment!” 


THE MAGIC SHADOW. 257 


She might well stare. Her boy stood and 
smiled in the sun, and his shadow lay on the 
whitened steps. Only the silhouette was not 
that of a little breeched boy at all, but of a litt'ec 
girl in petticoats ; and it wore long curls, whereas 
the charwoman’s son was close-cropped. 

The woman stepped out on the terrace to 
look closer. She twirled her son round and 
walked him down into the garden, and back- 
wards and forwards, and stood him in all 
manner of positions and attitudes, and rubbed 
her eyes. But there was no mistake: the 
shadow was that of a little girl. 

She hurried over her charing, and took the 
boy home for his father to see before sunset. 
As the matter seemed important, and she did 
not wish people in the street to notice anything 
strange, they rode back in an omnibus. They 
might have spared their haste, however, as the 
cab-driver did not reach home till supper-time, 
and then it was found that in the light of a 
candle, even when stuck inside a carriage-lamp, 
their son cast just an ordinary shadow. But 


next morning at sunrise they woke him up and 
R 


258 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


carried him to the house-top, where the sunlight 
slanted between the chimney-stacks: and the 
shadow was that of a little girl. 

The father scratched his head. “There’s 
money in this, wife. We'll keep the thing close; 
and in a year or two he'll be fit to go round ina 
show and earn money to support our declining 
years,” 


With that the poor little one’s misfortunes 
began. For they shut him in his room, nor 
allowed him to play with the other children in 
the alley—there was no knowing what harm 
might come to his precious shadow. On dark 
nights his father walked him out along the 
streets; and the boy saw many curious things 
under the gas-lamps, but never the little girl 
who inhabited his shadow. So that by degrees 
he forgot all about her. And his father kept 
silence. 

Yet all the while she grew side by side with 
him, keeping pace with his years. And on his 
fifteenth birthday, when his parents took him 
out into the country and, in the sunshine there, 


THE MAGIC SHADOW. 259 


revealed his secret, she was indeed a companion 
to be proud of—neat of figure, trim of ankle, 
with masses of waving hair; but whether blonde 
or brunette could not be told; and, alas! she 
had no eyes to look into. 

“ My son,” said they, “the world lies before 
you. Only do not forget your parents, who 
conferred on you this remarkable shadow.” 

The youth promised, and went off to a show- 
man. The showman gladly hired him; for, of 
course, a magic shadow was a rarity, though not 
so well paying as the Strong Man or the Fat 
Woman, for these were worth seeing every day, 
whereas for weeks at a time, in dull weather or 
foggy, our hero had no shadow at all. But he 
earned enough to keep himself and help the 
parents at home; and was considered a success. 


One day, after five years of this, he sought 
the Strong Man, and sighed. For they had 
become close friends. 

“T am in love,” he confessed. 

“With your shadow ?” 

“No.” 


260 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES. 


“Not with the Fat Woman!” the Strong 
Man exclaimed, with a start of jealousy. 

“No. I have seen her that I mean these 
three days in the Square, on her way to music 
lesson. She has dark brown eyes and wears 
yellow ribbons. I love her.” 

“You don’t say so! She has never come to 
our performance, I hope.” 

“It has been foggy ever since we came to 
this town.” 

“Ah, to be sure. Then there’s a chance: 
for, you see, she would never look at you if she 
knew of—of that other. Take my advice—go 
into society, always at night, when there is no 
danger; get introduced; dance with her; sing 
serenades under her window; then marry her. 
Afterwards—well, that’s your affair.” 

So the youth went into society and met the 
girl he loved, and danced with her so viva- 
ciously and sang serenades with such feeling 
beneath her window, that at last she felt he was 
all in all to her. Then the youth asked to be 
allowed to see her father, who was a Retired 
Colonel; and professed himself a man of Sub- 


THE*MAGIC SHADOW. 261 


stance. He said nothing of the Shadow: but it 
is true he had saved a certain amount. “Then 
to all intents and purposes you are a gentle- 
man,” said the Retired Colonel; and the wed- 
ding-day was fixed. 

They were married in dull weather, and 
spent a delightful honeymoon. But when spring 
came and brighter days, the young wife began to 
feel lonely; for her husband locked himself, all 
the day long, in his study—to work, as he said. 
He seemed to be always at work ; and whenever 
he consented to a holiday, it was sure to fall on 
the bleakest and dismallest day in the week. 

“You are never so gay now as you were last 
Autumn. I am jealous of that work of yours. 
At least,” she pleaded, “let me sit with you and 
share your affection with it.” 

But he laughed and denied her: and next 
day she peered in through the keyhole of his 
study. 

That same evening she ran away from him: 
having seen the shadow of another woman by 
his side. 


Then the poor man—for he had loved his 


262 NOUGHTS AND CROSSES, 


wife—cursed the day of his birth and led an 
evil life. This lasted for ten years, and his wife 
died in her father’s house, unforgiving. 


On the day of her funeral, the man said to 
his shadow—“I see it all. We were made for 
each other, so let us marry. You have wrecked 
my life and now must save it. Only it is rather 
hard to marry a wife whom one can only see by 
sunlight and moonlight.” 

So they were married; and spent all their 
life in the open air, looking on the naked world 
and learning its secrets. And his shadow bore 
him children, in stony ways and on the bare 
mountain-side. And for every child that was 
born the man felt the pangs of it. 

And at last he died and was judged: and 
being interrogated concerning his good deeds, 
began— 

“ We two ‘ 
—and looked around for his shadow. A great 





light shone all about; but she was nowhere to 
be seen. In fact, she had passed before him; 
and his children remained on earth, where men 


THE MAGIC SHADOW. 263 


already were heaping them with flowers and 
calling them divine. 

Then the man folded his arms and lifted his 
chin. 

“JT beg your pardon,” he said, “I am simply 


a sinner.” 


There are in this world certam men who 
create. The children of such are poems, and the 
half of their soul is female. For it is written 
that without woman no new thing shall come 
into the world. 





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